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Otaku. La cultura che ci ha trasformato in animali accumuladati
Nato in Giappone e da lì diffusosi in tutto il mondo, il termine otaku indica quella fascia di appassionati la cui intera esistenza ruota attorno al consumo maniacale di manga, anime, videogiochi e altri prodotti della cultura pop. In questo storico saggio, tra i più celebri della teoria critica nipponica, il filosofo Hiroki Azuma ne indaga le origini e le modalità di diffusione, per arrivare – grazie allo studio del culto sviluppatosi attorno a fenomeni quali Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion e Di Gi Charat – a tracciare il profilo di un nuovo soggetto, ormai protagonista della tarda modernità: l'«animale accumuladati», una forma di consumatore ossessionato dalla collezione e dalla catalogazione dei più disparati elementi presi da narrazioni sempre più stratificate, di cui la cultura otaku è al contempo avanguardia e rappresentazione terminale, anticipando l'attuale fan culture globale e gettando le basi delle cosiddette «estetiche di internet».
208 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 20, 2001
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1385 people want to read
About the author
Hiroki Azuma
116 books37 followers 東浩紀 in Japanese.
An influential Japanese literary critic and philosopher.
An influential Japanese literary critic and philosopher.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
February 10, 2018
I gave it to stars because frankly, I quite loved the insight and history on otaku culture but I'm not going to be nice here. I really did not enjoy this book at all and it's entirely for ideological reasons, and also because the translators should've probably stuck with the simple present rather than the present continuous for a lot of sentences ("Creators are analyzing and recombining" vs "creators analyze and recombine").
first of all I'll start off by saying that I don't buy into post modernism and generally see it as an overly complex way of analyzing the world. I especially despise that the very title of the book and its central premise comes from an author, Kojeve, who believes the US is a post Marxist paradise where one may work to their heart's content, and made several sweeping statements about Japanese culture based on his limited knowledge and brief stay in Japan. to me, using this man's scholarship at all is irresponsible. basing your ENTIRE CENTRAL THESIS ON HIS WORK? inexcusable. Azuma cites this complete crackpot and then brings up Zizek which made me want to stop reading right then and there.
while I can appreciate that Azuma is coming from a Japanese perspective, he's got a really unreasonable approach to how the Entire World works. like, living in the so called third world, I'm not sure how you can post modern yourself into declaring that first world modernity exists here when just over 50% of Brazilians have regular internet access and most of those internet users believe Facebook is the entire internet. it's an entire farce, one that assumes the world is the first world and the rest of us are irrelevant or non-existent, which I can assure you we very much are not even if we aren't nearly as well read or bilingual like I am, thank you very much.
the database part of the title is interesting and it's a cool theory actually but referring to people as animals because we are okay with nature (broadly speaking) is....hm. remembering that Hegel and his contemporaries did not have a favorable view of nature and those who existed peacefully with it, it takes on a pretty derogatory term. plus I'll go so far as to say that peaceful coexistence with nature, in the hegelian sense or the literal sense, is not something we should necessarily fear or fight, and that any thinking human would work with their environment, not against it. tl;dr we no longer live in the 19th century, can we let it go already, thanks.
despite all this negativity I enjoyed a lot of aspects of Database Animals. Azuma did an excellent job writing in an accessible, clear manner. this was deliberate, something he discussed in the intro, and I greatly appreciate authors who write for large audiences without simplifying their work too much. there's plenty of very difficult concepts in the book, so believe me, Azuma did not make this an easy read by any means.
it's also oddly compelling. I outright hated all of his sources but Azuma himself has such an interesting voice that I didn't mind rereading parts I didn't understand or reading the parts I hated. if I spoke any Japanese at all I'd love to talk to him personally, he really comes across as enthusiastic about his work, something I can appreciate.
the translation (except for a few annoying verb tense choices I touched on earlier) is quite coherent. if you don't read the translators notes at the beginning you're missing out on a lot of context and history surrounding the production of the book, which is frankly fascinating and engaging. as a translator myself I also love reading the process behind each project and this one has quite a lot of context you'd be remiss to pass up on.
and finally, nothing gets me hype like reading about Evangelion, especially Azuma's comparisons between Eva and Gundam. it was thought provoking and fun, and I wish the whole book was like that instead of telling me how I'm an animal because Hegel said so (if you can't tell, I hate Hegel).
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone because it's just too specific. it was an incredibly fast read though so if you've got time to kill I guess you can try picking it up but I genuinely think it isn't necessary. I wanted it to be about otaku culture and it ended up being about philosophy and post modernism, the two things I hate the most, so just keep that in mind before reading.
first of all I'll start off by saying that I don't buy into post modernism and generally see it as an overly complex way of analyzing the world. I especially despise that the very title of the book and its central premise comes from an author, Kojeve, who believes the US is a post Marxist paradise where one may work to their heart's content, and made several sweeping statements about Japanese culture based on his limited knowledge and brief stay in Japan. to me, using this man's scholarship at all is irresponsible. basing your ENTIRE CENTRAL THESIS ON HIS WORK? inexcusable. Azuma cites this complete crackpot and then brings up Zizek which made me want to stop reading right then and there.
while I can appreciate that Azuma is coming from a Japanese perspective, he's got a really unreasonable approach to how the Entire World works. like, living in the so called third world, I'm not sure how you can post modern yourself into declaring that first world modernity exists here when just over 50% of Brazilians have regular internet access and most of those internet users believe Facebook is the entire internet. it's an entire farce, one that assumes the world is the first world and the rest of us are irrelevant or non-existent, which I can assure you we very much are not even if we aren't nearly as well read or bilingual like I am, thank you very much.
the database part of the title is interesting and it's a cool theory actually but referring to people as animals because we are okay with nature (broadly speaking) is....hm. remembering that Hegel and his contemporaries did not have a favorable view of nature and those who existed peacefully with it, it takes on a pretty derogatory term. plus I'll go so far as to say that peaceful coexistence with nature, in the hegelian sense or the literal sense, is not something we should necessarily fear or fight, and that any thinking human would work with their environment, not against it. tl;dr we no longer live in the 19th century, can we let it go already, thanks.
despite all this negativity I enjoyed a lot of aspects of Database Animals. Azuma did an excellent job writing in an accessible, clear manner. this was deliberate, something he discussed in the intro, and I greatly appreciate authors who write for large audiences without simplifying their work too much. there's plenty of very difficult concepts in the book, so believe me, Azuma did not make this an easy read by any means.
it's also oddly compelling. I outright hated all of his sources but Azuma himself has such an interesting voice that I didn't mind rereading parts I didn't understand or reading the parts I hated. if I spoke any Japanese at all I'd love to talk to him personally, he really comes across as enthusiastic about his work, something I can appreciate.
the translation (except for a few annoying verb tense choices I touched on earlier) is quite coherent. if you don't read the translators notes at the beginning you're missing out on a lot of context and history surrounding the production of the book, which is frankly fascinating and engaging. as a translator myself I also love reading the process behind each project and this one has quite a lot of context you'd be remiss to pass up on.
and finally, nothing gets me hype like reading about Evangelion, especially Azuma's comparisons between Eva and Gundam. it was thought provoking and fun, and I wish the whole book was like that instead of telling me how I'm an animal because Hegel said so (if you can't tell, I hate Hegel).
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone because it's just too specific. it was an incredibly fast read though so if you've got time to kill I guess you can try picking it up but I genuinely think it isn't necessary. I wanted it to be about otaku culture and it ended up being about philosophy and post modernism, the two things I hate the most, so just keep that in mind before reading.
September 1, 2012
Hiroki Azuma is quite schematic in applying the principles of postmodern theory to narrative consumption, which he argues has now become 'database' consumption in contemporary [otaku] culture. Two trojan horses are at play here. "Japan" stands as a place that can either lead the way to an advanced, post-modern consumerist society or an exception that bends, but confirms, the rule, while "otaku" stands a fizzling subculture that has already been supplying the mainstream its vocabulary for a long time, which means that we all are potentially, to an extent, and as consumers, "otaku". To be prudent, however, I would admit that Azuma doesn't always make these conclusions, either attributing them to someone else, or inverting the question ("couldn't it be said that.."). He spends most of his time detailing models, which might appear to be repetitive at times, but stands quite fruitful. To do this, he engages with a short array of western philosophers, like Zizek, Kojève, Lacan, and Baudrillard, either in very specific details, or general theories, so one could say he doesn't really build up on those sources; they also seem a bit dated, though it appears the links with japanese contemporary theory are much more attuned. Sadly, Azuma's infographics and pictorial examples are neglected by the publisher, as they appear pixelated in print form, perhaps because they were low-resolution to begin with. For a book that relies on these kind of graphics, it is an obvious flaw. The book also ends on a somewhat abrupt note, like the writer suddenly dropped his interest on the subject, and you end up missing a conclusion, as if all those points had to be hammered home and an extra, overarching argument could be made. To me, all the emancipatory qualities of the otaku experience struggle with the idea that database consumption manifests itself as a sort of drug addiction, not because the therapeutic qualities of fiction are a novelty, but because they are now (according to Azuma) its main driver.
December 7, 2011
Azuma’s theoretical analysis of Japanese ‘Otaku’ culture provides some useful insights into Japanese intellectual life, ‘applied’ post-modernism and a phenomenon which, like rap from the other side of the world, has spread with globalisation. The footnotes are as valuable as the text.
It is perhaps a sign of that spread that my daughter (English) was able to point out quite quickly that two illustrations (of images of girls from Urusei Yatsura and Sailor Moon) had been transposed. It seems that the kids are sharper than the academics on matters of actual content.
Unfortunately, like so many works about the post-modern, the book is marred by Theory. Azuma has some important things to say about the end of the modernist project and of grand narratives but he over-relies on Kojeve and he seems desperate to assert his own authorial presence over the data.
Kojeve and the Neo-Hegelians represent a particular bug bear of mine (their desperate attempt to impose authorial rights on history strikes me as the last fling of a redundant academy) but equally awkward is Azuma’s own instinct to over-analyse and model.
The section on multiple personality as analogue for Otaku modes of thinking is mildly embarrassing though this is a rare lapse. What Azuma fails to understand are the power relations implicit in the internet revolution insofar as it allows us choices about value.
He is excellent on identifying the role of desire rather than need in post-modern internet culture but he under-estimates the positive role of Japanese popular culture in opening up the space for personal psychotherapeutic solutions to living under conditions of excessive socialisation.
He strikes me as still ambiguous in his attempt to remain objective about phenomena that are best understood subjectively. What we have to ask is not why ‘Otaku’ works in Japan but what it means insofar as it has been adapted (again, like rap) amongst entire generations overseas.
His analyses are sound and informative but he seems to find it difficult to see that Otaku thinking can co-exist with a much more grounded relationship with the real world than modernist ideologies have ever permitted their adherents to do.
The point of the modernist ideologue is that he cannot but confuse imagination and reality – we see it in the ‘Great Religions’, in Marxism-Leninism and in Neo-Hegelianism.
Today, we see the desperate attempts of politicians to save the Euro as their attempt to force reality into an imaginative strait-jacket. This confusion of imagination and reality is at the root of the great blood-lettings of the recent past.
This derives from an obsession with unification – as if the individual mind working within one Heraclitean system can be brought into alignment by force with a Heraclitean world working to different rules.
Modern history is the paradoxical attempt to 'will' Cartesian realities be over-ridden so that individuation is not a matter of personal discovery unto death in an unknowable monist materialist world (the way of existentialism) but a social practice built around ‘Humanity’.
The post-modern revolution provided a theoretical framework for a very profound change in human relations but this revolution continues to use the praxis of modernity because intellectuals, by their very nature, belong to the old world even as they seek to understand the new.
Practical, as opposed to theoretical, post-modernism can be characterised by an individual and immediate understanding that the world of socialisation and the worlds of individual imaginations based on immediate desires (where Lacan does have insights) are different but equal in worth.
A person is thrust into a world (so much was elucidated by Heidegger) which is constructed by others. Alienation is the recognition that this social world (since the material world is merely the satisfier or denier of needs) does not accord with the inner desiring self.
Socialisation (for many and often sound reasons) blocks desire and (under modernism and earlier systems) went so far as try to police desire by socialising the inner mind of persons.
Even today, liberal ideologues do this as various forms of political correctness and the constant process of engineering consent. The corporate system lives in the half world between systems, simultaneously trying to manufacture desires and respond to desires that are not manufactured.
The market has moved on from the satisfactions of needs, through the creation of desires (and needs) to the satisfaction of desires not of its own making. The power has shifted to the person desiring and this confuses a whole class of intermediaries who made choices for others.
The market (by recognising the value of desire) and then the internet (in enabling the desirer access to massive numbers of constantly adaptable and recursive objects of desire) has allowed the young (who will be old one day) the ability to choose ‘destinies’ and ‘identities’.
The modern liberal mind is suspicious of the market and increasingly of the internet (except as a directed tool) but it actively loathes the idea of persons floating between and around multiple identities and destinies instead of locking themselves into some socially definable category.
Think of the difference between the Generation of ‘68's determination to class people as gays or blacks or jews and the floating identities of people who play with many sexualities, cultural allegiances and spiritual paths in shifting tribes. The discomfort of the former becomes clearer.
The ‘modern’ Liberal wants the liberation of a rational person who is equal and objectified within a total humanity. The ‘post-modern’ acts as if he is already liberated as a person operating beyond reason, equal in praxis and with no sense of being anything other than one of many thinking animals.
Liberals understand that the post-moderns are highly creative and radical in thought but deeply conservative about social relations and change in the real world. The post-moderns choose to accept reality as it is and construct complex and creative private lives in floating communities or tribes.
Azuma grasps much of this. The book is worth reading for his descriptions of how one version of post-modern culture operates, perfectly harmlessly, within a major new paradigm for productive relations which the ‘moderns’ are now busy trying to put back in a box marked ‘controlled zone’.
Whether they will succeed or not is not known but it will be sad if elites re-capture the high ground they have abandoned and try to impose ‘grand narratives’ that turn the ‘new humans’ (closer to their animal desires and so stronger) back into objects again (and so weaker).
A surprisingly readable book for a translation of a text in post-modern theory, it is not quite the masterpiece that it could have been because the author allows himself to get lost in the intellectual struggles of his own country but it is well worth reading.
It is perhaps a sign of that spread that my daughter (English) was able to point out quite quickly that two illustrations (of images of girls from Urusei Yatsura and Sailor Moon) had been transposed. It seems that the kids are sharper than the academics on matters of actual content.
Unfortunately, like so many works about the post-modern, the book is marred by Theory. Azuma has some important things to say about the end of the modernist project and of grand narratives but he over-relies on Kojeve and he seems desperate to assert his own authorial presence over the data.
Kojeve and the Neo-Hegelians represent a particular bug bear of mine (their desperate attempt to impose authorial rights on history strikes me as the last fling of a redundant academy) but equally awkward is Azuma’s own instinct to over-analyse and model.
The section on multiple personality as analogue for Otaku modes of thinking is mildly embarrassing though this is a rare lapse. What Azuma fails to understand are the power relations implicit in the internet revolution insofar as it allows us choices about value.
He is excellent on identifying the role of desire rather than need in post-modern internet culture but he under-estimates the positive role of Japanese popular culture in opening up the space for personal psychotherapeutic solutions to living under conditions of excessive socialisation.
He strikes me as still ambiguous in his attempt to remain objective about phenomena that are best understood subjectively. What we have to ask is not why ‘Otaku’ works in Japan but what it means insofar as it has been adapted (again, like rap) amongst entire generations overseas.
His analyses are sound and informative but he seems to find it difficult to see that Otaku thinking can co-exist with a much more grounded relationship with the real world than modernist ideologies have ever permitted their adherents to do.
The point of the modernist ideologue is that he cannot but confuse imagination and reality – we see it in the ‘Great Religions’, in Marxism-Leninism and in Neo-Hegelianism.
Today, we see the desperate attempts of politicians to save the Euro as their attempt to force reality into an imaginative strait-jacket. This confusion of imagination and reality is at the root of the great blood-lettings of the recent past.
This derives from an obsession with unification – as if the individual mind working within one Heraclitean system can be brought into alignment by force with a Heraclitean world working to different rules.
Modern history is the paradoxical attempt to 'will' Cartesian realities be over-ridden so that individuation is not a matter of personal discovery unto death in an unknowable monist materialist world (the way of existentialism) but a social practice built around ‘Humanity’.
The post-modern revolution provided a theoretical framework for a very profound change in human relations but this revolution continues to use the praxis of modernity because intellectuals, by their very nature, belong to the old world even as they seek to understand the new.
Practical, as opposed to theoretical, post-modernism can be characterised by an individual and immediate understanding that the world of socialisation and the worlds of individual imaginations based on immediate desires (where Lacan does have insights) are different but equal in worth.
A person is thrust into a world (so much was elucidated by Heidegger) which is constructed by others. Alienation is the recognition that this social world (since the material world is merely the satisfier or denier of needs) does not accord with the inner desiring self.
Socialisation (for many and often sound reasons) blocks desire and (under modernism and earlier systems) went so far as try to police desire by socialising the inner mind of persons.
Even today, liberal ideologues do this as various forms of political correctness and the constant process of engineering consent. The corporate system lives in the half world between systems, simultaneously trying to manufacture desires and respond to desires that are not manufactured.
The market has moved on from the satisfactions of needs, through the creation of desires (and needs) to the satisfaction of desires not of its own making. The power has shifted to the person desiring and this confuses a whole class of intermediaries who made choices for others.
The market (by recognising the value of desire) and then the internet (in enabling the desirer access to massive numbers of constantly adaptable and recursive objects of desire) has allowed the young (who will be old one day) the ability to choose ‘destinies’ and ‘identities’.
The modern liberal mind is suspicious of the market and increasingly of the internet (except as a directed tool) but it actively loathes the idea of persons floating between and around multiple identities and destinies instead of locking themselves into some socially definable category.
Think of the difference between the Generation of ‘68's determination to class people as gays or blacks or jews and the floating identities of people who play with many sexualities, cultural allegiances and spiritual paths in shifting tribes. The discomfort of the former becomes clearer.
The ‘modern’ Liberal wants the liberation of a rational person who is equal and objectified within a total humanity. The ‘post-modern’ acts as if he is already liberated as a person operating beyond reason, equal in praxis and with no sense of being anything other than one of many thinking animals.
Liberals understand that the post-moderns are highly creative and radical in thought but deeply conservative about social relations and change in the real world. The post-moderns choose to accept reality as it is and construct complex and creative private lives in floating communities or tribes.
Azuma grasps much of this. The book is worth reading for his descriptions of how one version of post-modern culture operates, perfectly harmlessly, within a major new paradigm for productive relations which the ‘moderns’ are now busy trying to put back in a box marked ‘controlled zone’.
Whether they will succeed or not is not known but it will be sad if elites re-capture the high ground they have abandoned and try to impose ‘grand narratives’ that turn the ‘new humans’ (closer to their animal desires and so stronger) back into objects again (and so weaker).
A surprisingly readable book for a translation of a text in post-modern theory, it is not quite the masterpiece that it could have been because the author allows himself to get lost in the intellectual struggles of his own country but it is well worth reading.
March 22, 2019
La cultura otaku es un gran ejemplo de lo que caracteriza a la posmodernidad. En este libro se analizan sus orígenes y su relación con la cultura del siglo XX. Se habla de cómo la cultura otaku está marcada por el consumismo y cómo no puede separarse de las nuevas tecnologías. Se habla de animes de gran influencia como Gundam, Martian Successor Nadesico y Evangelion, de las tres generaciones de otakus que los vieron nacer y sus diferentes visiones de la subcultura otaku. También se para a analizar las visual novels y señala cómo su estructura jerárquica por rutas se relaciona con conceptos como la prevalencia de pequeñas narrativas que actuan como simulacros (copias de un material original) y que se relacionan con una gran no-narrativa (una base de datos que sustituye a la gran narrativa previa a la posmodernidad, los valores tradicionales de un estado o una sociedad).
Es un libro que vale la pena leer si te interesa el origen y la estructura de los grupos sociales de la cultura otaku, los animes o las visual novels. Mi mayor crítica es que podía ser farragoso en ocasiones, ya que es un libro destinado a un público académico, aunque también esté pensado para ser divulgativo. Además, el final se me ha hecho muy brusco y me he quedado algo desconcertada, en parte porque el ebook me marcaba que me quedaba más de lo que era realmente.
Es un libro que vale la pena leer si te interesa el origen y la estructura de los grupos sociales de la cultura otaku, los animes o las visual novels. Mi mayor crítica es que podía ser farragoso en ocasiones, ya que es un libro destinado a un público académico, aunque también esté pensado para ser divulgativo. Además, el final se me ha hecho muy brusco y me he quedado algo desconcertada, en parte porque el ebook me marcaba que me quedaba más de lo que era realmente.
September 27, 2020
Otaku Database Animals ဆိုတဲ႕ စာအုပ္က
anime ႀကည္႕တဲ႕သူေတြ မ်က္ေမွာက္ေခတ္ ဂ်ပန္ယဥ္ေက်းမႈကို စိတ္ဝင္စားတဲ႕သူေတြအတြက္ သင္႕ေတာ္မယ္ စာအုပ္ပါ။ အိုတာကု phenomenon အေပၚ ဒသန နဲ႕ လူမႈေဗဒအရ ေလ႕လာထားတဲ႕ ဒီစာအုပ္ကို ၂၀၀၂ မွာ မူရင္းဂ်ပန္ဘာသာနဲ႕ ထြက္ရိွခဲ႕ၿပီး ေနာက္ ၅ ႏွစ္ႀကာမွ အဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာၿပန္ ထြက္ရိွခဲ့တယ္။
otaku ဆိုတဲ႕ ေဝါဟရကို ႀကားဖူးႀကမွာပါ။ အိုတာကုဆိုတာ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ေပၚၿပဴလာ ေဖ်ာ္ၿဖည္မႈထုတ္ကုန္ေတြ (အထူးသၿဖင္႕anime၊ manga နဲ႕ပတ္သက္တဲ႕ေရာင္းကုန္ေတြ) ကို စိတ္အားထက္သန္စြာ ဝယ္သူအားေပးသူေတြပဲၿဖစ္တယ္။ otaku ၿဖစ္အင္ရဲ႕သမိုင္းကို အက်ဥ္းခ်ဳပ္ၿပီး ေရးမယ္ဆိုရင္ မွတ္ေက်ာက္တင္ရေလာက္တဲ႕ တိုးတက္မႈတစ္ခုၿဖစ္တဲ႕ Neon Genesis Evangelion အေႀကာင္းထည္႕ ေၿပာမွရပါမယ္။ ၁၉၉၅ မွာ ထြက္ရိွခဲ႕ၿပီး ဇီဝစက္ရုပ္ေတြကိုေမာင္းႏွင္တဲ႕ အထက္တန္းေက်ာင္းသားေတြ အေႀကာင္း ရိုက္ၿပထားတဲ႕ အခန္းဆက္ဇာတ္လမ္းပါ။ ဆယ္ေက်ာ္သက္အရြယ္ စိတ္ဖိစီးမႈေတြ အလိုမက်မႈေတြကို ခရစ္ယာန္၊ ဓမၼက်မ္းေဟာင္း သီအိုေလာ္ဂ်ီ၊ ဂ်ဳးဂမီၻရ kabbalah၊ ဖရိုက္ဒ္ ရဲ႕သရုပ္ခြဲစိတ္ပညာ စတဲ႕သိမႈရပ္ဝန္းေပါင္းစံုက သေကၤတပံုရိပ္ေတြနဲ႕အေရာင္ခ်ယ္အသက္သြင္း ထားတဲ႕ ဒီဇာတ္လမ္းတြဲဟာ ၿပည္တြင္းမွာသာမက ၿပည္ပမွာပါ တစ္ခဲနက္ေအာင္ၿမင္ခဲ႕တယ္။ အဓိကဇာတ္ေကာင္ Shinji ၊ Rei နဲ႕ Asuka တို႕ရဲ႕ ဖေယာင္းအလွရုပ္ေတြအၿပင္ သူတို႕ပံုရုပ္ရိုက္ႏိႈပ္ထားတဲ႕ အက်ၤ ီ၊ ေက်ာင္းသံုးကိရိယာ၊ လူသံုးကုန္ပစၥည္းအစံု ကေန ဂိမ္း၊ ေနာက္ဆက္တြဲဝတၳဳတိုေတြအထိ ပတ္သက္တဲ႕ merchandise ေတြအႀကီးအက်ယ္ေရာင္းသြက္ခဲ႕တယ္။ ဒီကာလတစ္ဝိုက္က တတိယအုိတာကုေခတ္ရဲ႕ အစပဲလို႕ Azuma နဲ႕ေလ႕လာသူေတြက သတ္မွတ္ထားတယ္။ ဒီလိုနဲ႕ ၁၉၉၀ ေနာက္ပိုင္း အိုတာကုယဥ္ေက်းမႈနဲ႕ တြဲလို႕အိုတာကုစားသံုးသူအၿပဳအမူက အာရွတိုက္တဝွမ္းကေန အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြအထိ ထိုးေဖာက္လာပါေရာ။
တကယ္ေတာ႕ anime ဆိုတာ ထုတ္လုပ္တည္းျဖတ္မႈအရႀကည္႕မယ္ဆိုရင္ အေမရိကန္ကေနရတဲ႕ ကုန္ႀကမ္းေတြအားကိုးနဲ႕ ေယာင္မွားတဲ႕ဂ်ပန္ (pseudo japan) တစ္ခုကို ဖန္တီးဖို႕ႀကိဳးစားေနတဲ႕ယဥ္ေက်းမႈ စီမံကိန္းတစ္ခုပဲလို႕ Azuma က ၿငင္းခ်က္ထုတ္ပါတယ္။ ၿပသနာက ၁၉၈၀ ပိုင္းေလာက္ကစလို႕ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ စီးပြားေရးယႏၱာရားက ေႏွးေကြးလာၿပီး တစ္ခ်ိန္တည္းမွာပဲ ငလ်င္ရဲ႕ဒဏ္၊ ေၿမေအာက္ရထားဘူတာ sarin ဓာတ္ေငြ႕အႀကမ္းဖက္ တိုက္ခိုက္မႈစတဲ႕အၿဖစ္အပ်က္ေတြက public consciousness ကို ကိုင္လႈပ္ခဲ႕တယ္။ စီးပြားေရးဒုတိယကမၻာစစ္ၿပီး စစ္ရံႈးကာလက သိမ္ငယ္စိတ္ေတြက တေက်ာ႕ၿပန္အသက္ဝင္လာတယ္။ ဒီအေတာတြင္း Edo ေခတ္ (၁၆၀၃ - ၁၈၆၈) တုန္းကလို ပိုၿပီးတည္ၿငိမ္ ေအးခ်မ္းတဲ႕အတိတ္က ေခတ္ေဟာင္းတစ္ခုကို မသိစိတ္က လိုလားေတာင္႕တာလာႀကတယ္။ တတိယနဲ႕စတုတၳမ်ိဳးဆက္ အိုတာကုေတြက ဒီလို အခင္းအက်င္းမ်ိဳးမွာ ႀကီးၿပင္းလာခဲ႕ရတယ္။ ဒီသမိုင္းအေတြ႕အႀကံဳ ေႀကာင္႕အဲ႕ဒီ႕ကာလက ထြက္ရိွခဲ႕တဲ႕ anime နဲ႕ manga ေတြက အေစာပိုင္း ပထမနဲ႕ဒုတိယမ်ိဳးဆက္ အိုတာကု ထုတ္ကုန္ေတြလို အမ်ိဳးသားေရးစိတ္ဓာတ္၊ အေမရိကန္ကို ဂ်ပန္မႈၿပဳမယ္႕ “Japanization of America” မဟာဗ်ဴဟာ လိုမ်ိဳး grand narrative ေတြ (ဥပမာ မာ႕စ္ဝါဒလိုမ်ိဳး အရာအားလံုးကို ရွင္းၿပႏိုင္တဲ႕ အလြန္အေရးပါတဲ႕ အဆိုအမိန္႕ေတြ) ရဲ႕ဗိုလ္က်ခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္မႈေအာက္က ရုန္းထြက္လာႏိုင္တယ္။ Azuma အဖို႕ Lyotard ေၿပာခဲ႕သလိုပဲ အစဥ္အလာကေနခြဲထြက္မႈဟာ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံတစ္ခုတည္းမွာပဲမဟုတ္ပဲ ၂၀ ရာစု အလယ္ပိုင္းေလာက္ကစလို႕ ကမၻာတစ္ဝွမ္းက မဟာအဆိုအမိန္႕ေတြအေပၚ သံသယ ဝင္လာတဲ႕historical trend ရဲ႕ ေဒသႏၱရေဖာ္ၿပမႈတစ္ရပ္ပဲ။
ဒီစာအုပ္မွာ Azuma ရဲ႕ဦးတည္ခ်က္ကေတာ႕ otaku ေတြကို လႈမႈယူနစ္တစ္ခုလို မွတ္ယူမေလ႕လာပဲ otaku အထူးသၿဖင္႕ တတိယမ်ိဳးနဲ႕ စတုတၳမ်ိဳးဆက္ အိုတာကုတို႕ရဲ႕စားသံုးသူအမူအက်င္႕ consumption behavior က ပို႕စ္ေမာဒန္ေခတ္နဲ႕ ပို႕စ္ေမာဒန္အသိစိတ္ (postmodern subjectivity) ရဲ႕ လကၡဏာတစ္ရပ္ၿဖစ္ေႀကာင္း ၿပသဖို႕ပါ။ Azuma ရဲ႕ ၿငင္းဆိုခ်က္ကို ေယဘုယအားၿဖင္႕ရွင္းၿပရမယ္ဆိုရင္ တတိယမ်ိဳးဆက္ အိုတာကုေတြကစၿပီး ေနာက္ပိုင္း အိုတာကုေတြက ဝတၳဳတိုေတြ၊ ဇာတ္လမ္းတြဲေတြရဲ႕ ေနာက္ခံ grand narrative ေတြ မဟုတ္ပဲ grand non narrative အလံုးစံု အဓိပၸာယ္ခ်မွတ္ခ်က္သေဘာ မေဆာင္တဲ႕ ေဒတာေဘ႕စ္ (database) ႀကီးကိုပဲ ေတာင္႕တလာတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာ ေဟဂယ္ဒသနပညာရွင္ Alexandre Kojeve ရဲ႕ animality နဲ႕ snobbery ဆိုတဲ႕ အသက္ရွင္ၿဖစ္တည္မႈဗ်ဴဟာႏွစ္သြယ္ (modes of living) ကို အထူးတလည္ ကိုးကားထားတယ္။ Kojeve ကေတာ႕ က်ေနာ္တို႕နဲ႕ ရင္းႏွီွးၿပီးသားၿဖစ္တဲ႕ ဖူကူယားမားရဲ႕ လက္ဦးဆရာလို႕လည္း ေခၚလို႕ရတယ္။ သူ႕အဆိုအရ သမိုင္းရဲ႕လမ္းဆံုးမွာ သမိုင္းလြန္လူသားဟာ အေမရိက ႏိုင္ငံလို လိုအင္ေတာင္႕တမႈ အၿမဲထြက္ေပၚေနၿပီး အၿမဲၿဖည္႕ဆည္းၿခင္းခံေနရတဲ႕ စားသံုးသူ လူ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္း (consumer society) နဲ႕ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံလို လြန္ေလၿပီးတဲ႕ေခတ္ေဟာင္းက grand narrative ေတြကို ၿပန္လည္ ေတာင္႕တရင္း မူလရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္တိမ္ေမ်ာေပ်ာက္ဆံုးသြာၿပီၿဖစ္တဲ႕ယဥ္ေက်းမႈဓေလ႕ေတြကို ဆက္လက္ က်င္႕သံုးတဲ႕ အဖြဲ႕အစည္း ႀကားမွ တစ္ခုခုကို ေရြးခ်ယ္ရမယ္။ Kojeve က လူသားမွန္ရင္ သဘာဝနဲ႕ အၿမဲဆန္႕က်င္႕ၿပီး သဘာဝရဲ႕ေဘာင္အၿပင္ဘက္ကို ဦးတည္ၿပီး ရုန္းကန္ရွင္သန္ေနရမယ္လို႕ဆိုတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ္႕မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္ အိုတာကုေတြက grand narrative ေတြကို အလိုမရိွေတာ႕ပဲ ပထမအလႊာမွာ local narrative ေတြနဲ႕ေမြ႕ေလ်ာ္ၿပီး ပိုၿပီးအေၿခခံက်တဲ႕ ဒုတိယအလႊာမွာေတာ႕ ေဒတာေဘ႕စ္ႀကီးကို လိုလားၿပီး အလႊာႏွစ္လႊာခြဲကာ ပံုၿပင္ဇာတ္လမ္းေတြကို စားသံုးက်တယ္။
ဒီေဒတာေဘစ္႕ဟာ ဇာတ္လမ္းအဂၤါရပ္အသစ္ေတြထြက္ရင္ ထြက္သလို အၿမဲေရြ႕လ်ားေၿပာင္းလဲေနၿပီး အဆံုးအစမရိွသလို ႀကိဳက္ႏွစ္သက္တဲ႕ေနရာကေန ဝင္ေရာက္လို႕ရတယ္။ အိုတာကုေတြဟာ ဇာတ္လမ္းတစ္ခုရဲ႕ေနာက္က ေလးနက္တဲ႕အဓိပၸာယ္၊ က်င္႕ဝတ္နိတိဆိုင္ရာ သင္ခန္းစာေတြကို တူးဆြဖို႕မႀကိဳးစားေတာ႕ပဲ ေဒတာေဘ႕စ္ကို တည္ေဆာက္ထားတဲ႕ အဂၤါရပ္ေတြ ဥပမာ ခ်စ္စရာ ေႀကာင္နားရြက္ေလးေတြ၊ french maid ဝတ္စံုေတြ၊ ဇာတ္လိုက္မင္းသားတစ္ေယာက္ထဲကို အမ်ိဳးသမီးဇာတ္ေကာင္ ေလးေယာက္ေလာက္က ဝိုင္းပိုးတဲ႕harem ဇာတ္လမ္းလိုမ်ိဳး element ေတြကို ဦးစားေပးစားသံုးလာတယ္။ ဒီ အဂၤါရပ္ေတြ အကုန္လံုးကို မွတ္တမ္းတင္ၿပီး ဆင္တူရိုးမွားဇာတ္လမ္းေတြကို ကိုယ္႕ဖာသာကိုယ္ ၿပန္လည္ တည္ေဆာက္ဖို႕အားသန္လာတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာ “ဆင္တူရိုးမွား” လို႕ဆိုရာမွာ တကယ္ေတာ႕ အစစ္ နဲ႕ အတုႀကားက နယ္ၿခားမ်ဥ္းက တၿဖည္းၿဖည္းတိုက္စားၿခင္းခံလာရတယ္။ fanmade ဇာတ္လမ္းေတြက စားသံုးသူေစ်းကြက္ထဲကို မူရင္းဇာတ္လမ္းေတြမထြက္ခင္ကတည္းက ၿပန္႕ႏွံ႕ေနၿပီ။ anime ေတြကို ထုတ္လုပ္တဲ႕ စတူဒီယိုေတြကလည္း ဒါမ်ိဳးကိစၥကို ခြင္႕ၿပဳရံုမက fan ေတြဆီက စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ယူၿပီး ေနာက္ရာသီထြက္မယ္႕စီးရီးထဲမွာ ဘယ္လိုဇာတ္ေကာင္ေတြပါမယ္၊ ဘယ္လိုဇာတ္လမ္းဆက္မယ္ဆိုတာ ဆံုးၿဖတ္လာႀကတယ္။ ေၿမပံုဟာ နယ္နမိတ္ၿဖစ္လာတယ္။ ထုတ္ကုန္ေတြကို “အစစ္”နဲ႕ယွဥ္ၿပီး တန္ဖိုးမၿဖတ္ပဲ ေဒတာေဘ႕စ္ကေန ဘယ္ေလာက္ကြာေဝးသလဲတိုင္းတာၿပီး အကဲၿဖတ္လာႀကတယ္။
ဒီေလာက္ဆိုရင္ Azuma ရဲ႕သီအိုရီ ၿပီးရင္ စာအုပ္ရဲ႕ေခါင္းစဥ္က ဘာကို ဆိုလိုသလဲဆိုတာ အနည္းငယ္ တီးေခါက္မိမယ္ထင္ပါတယ္။ သာမန္စာဖတ္သူေတြနဲ႕ ပို႕စ္ေမာဒန္ဒသန ၊ အေဆာက္အအံုလြန္ဝါဒနဲ႕႔ပတ္သက္တဲ႕ ပညာရပ္ဆိုင္ရာစာေပေတြ နဲ႕လံုးဝ မထိေတြ႕ဘူးရင္ေတာင္ ဂ်ာနယ္လစ္စတိုင္နဲ႕ အခ်က္အလက္ေတြကို တင္ျပထားတာေႀကာင္႕ဖတ္ရတာ ေခ်ာေခ်ာလ်ဳလ်ဳရိွမွာပါ။ Baudrillard ၊ Lyotard ၊ Zizek စတဲ႕ နာမည္ႀကီး လူမႈဒသနပညာရွင္ေတြရဲ႕ အယူအဆေတြကို ရွည္လ်ားစြာ ရွင္းၿပ��ေနပဲ သင္႕ေလ်ာ္သလို ကိုးကားထားတာကို ေတြ႕ရတယ္ (ဥပမာ Baudrillard ဆီကေန “simulacrum” အစစ္မရိွေတာ႕တဲ႕ဆင္တူယိုးမွား ဆိုတဲ႕ အယူအဆကို ေခ်းငွားထားတယ္)။ အိုကာကုေတြကေတာ႕ သူတို႕အေပၚ Azuma ရႈၿမင္တဲ႕အၿမင္ကို သိပ္ၿပီး ႀကိဳက္လွမယ္မထင္ဘူး။ Azuma ကုိယ္တိုင္က အိုတာကု “စစ္စစ္” မဟုတ္သလို academic စစ္လည္းမဟုတ္တဲ႕အတြက္ေႀကာင္႕ပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ္႕ Azuma ကေတာ႕ တန္းဖိုးၿဖတ္ေဝဖန္မႈေတြမပါပဲ လက္ရိွၿဖစ္အင္ကို သီအိုရီနည္းအရ ဦညြတ္တဲ႕နည္းနဲ႕ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္ထားတဲ႕လို႕က်ေနာ္ၿမင္တယ္။ စာအုပ္အဆံုးပိုင္းက world wide web နဲ႕ အင္တာနက္အေပၚသံုးသပ္ခ်က္ေတြကေတာ႕ ေခတ္ေနာက္ေနၿပီ ခံစားရတယ္ (ဒါကေတာ႕ Azuma အၿပစ္မဟုတ္ေပဘူး။ မူရင္းစာအုပ္က ၂၀၀၂ မွာထြက္ခဲ႕တာကိုး)။ အိုတာကု subculture နဲ႕ postmodernity ရဲ႕ ဆက္သြယ္ခ်က္ေတြအေႀကာင္း စိတ္ဝင္စားတဲ႕သူတိုင္း ဖတ္ရႈဖို႕တိုက္တြန္းလိုပါတယ္။
anime ႀကည္႕တဲ႕သူေတြ မ်က္ေမွာက္ေခတ္ ဂ်ပန္ယဥ္ေက်းမႈကို စိတ္ဝင္စားတဲ႕သူေတြအတြက္ သင္႕ေတာ္မယ္ စာအုပ္ပါ။ အိုတာကု phenomenon အေပၚ ဒသန နဲ႕ လူမႈေဗဒအရ ေလ႕လာထားတဲ႕ ဒီစာအုပ္ကို ၂၀၀၂ မွာ မူရင္းဂ်ပန္ဘာသာနဲ႕ ထြက္ရိွခဲ႕ၿပီး ေနာက္ ၅ ႏွစ္ႀကာမွ အဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာၿပန္ ထြက္ရိွခဲ့တယ္။
otaku ဆိုတဲ႕ ေဝါဟရကို ႀကားဖူးႀကမွာပါ။ အိုတာကုဆိုတာ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ေပၚၿပဴလာ ေဖ်ာ္ၿဖည္မႈထုတ္ကုန္ေတြ (အထူးသၿဖင္႕anime၊ manga နဲ႕ပတ္သက္တဲ႕ေရာင္းကုန္ေတြ) ကို စိတ္အားထက္သန္စြာ ဝယ္သူအားေပးသူေတြပဲၿဖစ္တယ္။ otaku ၿဖစ္အင္ရဲ႕သမိုင္းကို အက်ဥ္းခ်ဳပ္ၿပီး ေရးမယ္ဆိုရင္ မွတ္ေက်ာက္တင္ရေလာက္တဲ႕ တိုးတက္မႈတစ္ခုၿဖစ္တဲ႕ Neon Genesis Evangelion အေႀကာင္းထည္႕ ေၿပာမွရပါမယ္။ ၁၉၉၅ မွာ ထြက္ရိွခဲ႕ၿပီး ဇီဝစက္ရုပ္ေတြကိုေမာင္းႏွင္တဲ႕ အထက္တန္းေက်ာင္းသားေတြ အေႀကာင္း ရိုက္ၿပထားတဲ႕ အခန္းဆက္ဇာတ္လမ္းပါ။ ဆယ္ေက်ာ္သက္အရြယ္ စိတ္ဖိစီးမႈေတြ အလိုမက်မႈေတြကို ခရစ္ယာန္၊ ဓမၼက်မ္းေဟာင္း သီအိုေလာ္ဂ်ီ၊ ဂ်ဳးဂမီၻရ kabbalah၊ ဖရိုက္ဒ္ ရဲ႕သရုပ္ခြဲစိတ္ပညာ စတဲ႕သိမႈရပ္ဝန္းေပါင္းစံုက သေကၤတပံုရိပ္ေတြနဲ႕အေရာင္ခ်ယ္အသက္သြင္း ထားတဲ႕ ဒီဇာတ္လမ္းတြဲဟာ ၿပည္တြင္းမွာသာမက ၿပည္ပမွာပါ တစ္ခဲနက္ေအာင္ၿမင္ခဲ႕တယ္။ အဓိကဇာတ္ေကာင္ Shinji ၊ Rei နဲ႕ Asuka တို႕ရဲ႕ ဖေယာင္းအလွရုပ္ေတြအၿပင္ သူတို႕ပံုရုပ္ရိုက္ႏိႈပ္ထားတဲ႕ အက်ၤ ီ၊ ေက်ာင္းသံုးကိရိယာ၊ လူသံုးကုန္ပစၥည္းအစံု ကေန ဂိမ္း၊ ေနာက္ဆက္တြဲဝတၳဳတိုေတြအထိ ပတ္သက္တဲ႕ merchandise ေတြအႀကီးအက်ယ္ေရာင္းသြက္ခဲ႕တယ္။ ဒီကာလတစ္ဝိုက္က တတိယအုိတာကုေခတ္ရဲ႕ အစပဲလို႕ Azuma နဲ႕ေလ႕လာသူေတြက သတ္မွတ္ထားတယ္။ ဒီလိုနဲ႕ ၁၉၉၀ ေနာက္ပိုင္း အိုတာကုယဥ္ေက်းမႈနဲ႕ တြဲလို႕အိုတာကုစားသံုးသူအၿပဳအမူက အာရွတိုက္တဝွမ္းကေန အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြအထိ ထိုးေဖာက္လာပါေရာ။
တကယ္ေတာ႕ anime ဆိုတာ ထုတ္လုပ္တည္းျဖတ္မႈအရႀကည္႕မယ္ဆိုရင္ အေမရိကန္ကေနရတဲ႕ ကုန္ႀကမ္းေတြအားကိုးနဲ႕ ေယာင္မွားတဲ႕ဂ်ပန္ (pseudo japan) တစ္ခုကို ဖန္တီးဖို႕ႀကိဳးစားေနတဲ႕ယဥ္ေက်းမႈ စီမံကိန္းတစ္ခုပဲလို႕ Azuma က ၿငင္းခ်က္ထုတ္ပါတယ္။ ၿပသနာက ၁၉၈၀ ပိုင္းေလာက္ကစလို႕ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ စီးပြားေရးယႏၱာရားက ေႏွးေကြးလာၿပီး တစ္ခ်ိန္တည္းမွာပဲ ငလ်င္ရဲ႕ဒဏ္၊ ေၿမေအာက္ရထားဘူတာ sarin ဓာတ္ေငြ႕အႀကမ္းဖက္ တိုက္ခိုက္မႈစတဲ႕အၿဖစ္အပ်က္ေတြက public consciousness ကို ကိုင္လႈပ္ခဲ႕တယ္။ စီးပြားေရးဒုတိယကမၻာစစ္ၿပီး စစ္ရံႈးကာလက သိမ္ငယ္စိတ္ေတြက တေက်ာ႕ၿပန္အသက္ဝင္လာတယ္။ ဒီအေတာတြင္း Edo ေခတ္ (၁၆၀၃ - ၁၈၆၈) တုန္းကလို ပိုၿပီးတည္ၿငိမ္ ေအးခ်မ္းတဲ႕အတိတ္က ေခတ္ေဟာင္းတစ္ခုကို မသိစိတ္က လိုလားေတာင္႕တာလာႀကတယ္။ တတိယနဲ႕စတုတၳမ်ိဳးဆက္ အိုတာကုေတြက ဒီလို အခင္းအက်င္းမ်ိဳးမွာ ႀကီးၿပင္းလာခဲ႕ရတယ္။ ဒီသမိုင္းအေတြ႕အႀကံဳ ေႀကာင္႕အဲ႕ဒီ႕ကာလက ထြက္ရိွခဲ႕တဲ႕ anime နဲ႕ manga ေတြက အေစာပိုင္း ပထမနဲ႕ဒုတိယမ်ိဳးဆက္ အိုတာကု ထုတ္ကုန္ေတြလို အမ်ိဳးသားေရးစိတ္ဓာတ္၊ အေမရိကန္ကို ဂ်ပန္မႈၿပဳမယ္႕ “Japanization of America” မဟာဗ်ဴဟာ လိုမ်ိဳး grand narrative ေတြ (ဥပမာ မာ႕စ္ဝါဒလိုမ်ိဳး အရာအားလံုးကို ရွင္းၿပႏိုင္တဲ႕ အလြန္အေရးပါတဲ႕ အဆိုအမိန္႕ေတြ) ရဲ႕ဗိုလ္က်ခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္မႈေအာက္က ရုန္းထြက္လာႏိုင္တယ္။ Azuma အဖို႕ Lyotard ေၿပာခဲ႕သလိုပဲ အစဥ္အလာကေနခြဲထြက္မႈဟာ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံတစ္ခုတည္းမွာပဲမဟုတ္ပဲ ၂၀ ရာစု အလယ္ပိုင္းေလာက္ကစလို႕ ကမၻာတစ္ဝွမ္းက မဟာအဆိုအမိန္႕ေတြအေပၚ သံသယ ဝင္လာတဲ႕historical trend ရဲ႕ ေဒသႏၱရေဖာ္ၿပမႈတစ္ရပ္ပဲ။
ဒီစာအုပ္မွာ Azuma ရဲ႕ဦးတည္ခ်က္ကေတာ႕ otaku ေတြကို လႈမႈယူနစ္တစ္ခုလို မွတ္ယူမေလ႕လာပဲ otaku အထူးသၿဖင္႕ တတိယမ်ိဳးနဲ႕ စတုတၳမ်ိဳးဆက္ အိုတာကုတို႕ရဲ႕စားသံုးသူအမူအက်င္႕ consumption behavior က ပို႕စ္ေမာဒန္ေခတ္နဲ႕ ပို႕စ္ေမာဒန္အသိစိတ္ (postmodern subjectivity) ရဲ႕ လကၡဏာတစ္ရပ္ၿဖစ္ေႀကာင္း ၿပသဖို႕ပါ။ Azuma ရဲ႕ ၿငင္းဆိုခ်က္ကို ေယဘုယအားၿဖင္႕ရွင္းၿပရမယ္ဆိုရင္ တတိယမ်ိဳးဆက္ အိုတာကုေတြကစၿပီး ေနာက္ပိုင္း အိုတာကုေတြက ဝတၳဳတိုေတြ၊ ဇာတ္လမ္းတြဲေတြရဲ႕ ေနာက္ခံ grand narrative ေတြ မဟုတ္ပဲ grand non narrative အလံုးစံု အဓိပၸာယ္ခ်မွတ္ခ်က္သေဘာ မေဆာင္တဲ႕ ေဒတာေဘ႕စ္ (database) ႀကီးကိုပဲ ေတာင္႕တလာတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာ ေဟဂယ္ဒသနပညာရွင္ Alexandre Kojeve ရဲ႕ animality နဲ႕ snobbery ဆိုတဲ႕ အသက္ရွင္ၿဖစ္တည္မႈဗ်ဴဟာႏွစ္သြယ္ (modes of living) ကို အထူးတလည္ ကိုးကားထားတယ္။ Kojeve ကေတာ႕ က်ေနာ္တို႕နဲ႕ ရင္းႏွီွးၿပီးသားၿဖစ္တဲ႕ ဖူကူယားမားရဲ႕ လက္ဦးဆရာလို႕လည္း ေခၚလို႕ရတယ္။ သူ႕အဆိုအရ သမိုင္းရဲ႕လမ္းဆံုးမွာ သမိုင္းလြန္လူသားဟာ အေမရိက ႏိုင္ငံလို လိုအင္ေတာင္႕တမႈ အၿမဲထြက္ေပၚေနၿပီး အၿမဲၿဖည္႕ဆည္းၿခင္းခံေနရတဲ႕ စားသံုးသူ လူ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္း (consumer society) နဲ႕ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံလို လြန္ေလၿပီးတဲ႕ေခတ္ေဟာင္းက grand narrative ေတြကို ၿပန္လည္ ေတာင္႕တရင္း မူလရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္တိမ္ေမ်ာေပ်ာက္ဆံုးသြာၿပီၿဖစ္တဲ႕ယဥ္ေက်းမႈဓေလ႕ေတြကို ဆက္လက္ က်င္႕သံုးတဲ႕ အဖြဲ႕အစည္း ႀကားမွ တစ္ခုခုကို ေရြးခ်ယ္ရမယ္။ Kojeve က လူသားမွန္ရင္ သဘာဝနဲ႕ အၿမဲဆန္႕က်င္႕ၿပီး သဘာဝရဲ႕ေဘာင္အၿပင္ဘက္ကို ဦးတည္ၿပီး ရုန္းကန္ရွင္သန္ေနရမယ္လို႕ဆိုတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ္႕မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္ အိုတာကုေတြက grand narrative ေတြကို အလိုမရိွေတာ႕ပဲ ပထမအလႊာမွာ local narrative ေတြနဲ႕ေမြ႕ေလ်ာ္ၿပီး ပိုၿပီးအေၿခခံက်တဲ႕ ဒုတိယအလႊာမွာေတာ႕ ေဒတာေဘ႕စ္ႀကီးကို လိုလားၿပီး အလႊာႏွစ္လႊာခြဲကာ ပံုၿပင္ဇာတ္လမ္းေတြကို စားသံုးက်တယ္။
ဒီေဒတာေဘစ္႕ဟာ ဇာတ္လမ္းအဂၤါရပ္အသစ္ေတြထြက္ရင္ ထြက္သလို အၿမဲေရြ႕လ်ားေၿပာင္းလဲေနၿပီး အဆံုးအစမရိွသလို ႀကိဳက္ႏွစ္သက္တဲ႕ေနရာကေန ဝင္ေရာက္လို႕ရတယ္။ အိုတာကုေတြဟာ ဇာတ္လမ္းတစ္ခုရဲ႕ေနာက္က ေလးနက္တဲ႕အဓိပၸာယ္၊ က်င္႕ဝတ္နိတိဆိုင္ရာ သင္ခန္းစာေတြကို တူးဆြဖို႕မႀကိဳးစားေတာ႕ပဲ ေဒတာေဘ႕စ္ကို တည္ေဆာက္ထားတဲ႕ အဂၤါရပ္ေတြ ဥပမာ ခ်စ္စရာ ေႀကာင္နားရြက္ေလးေတြ၊ french maid ဝတ္စံုေတြ၊ ဇာတ္လိုက္မင္းသားတစ္ေယာက္ထဲကို အမ်ိဳးသမီးဇာတ္ေကာင္ ေလးေယာက္ေလာက္က ဝိုင္းပိုးတဲ႕harem ဇာတ္လမ္းလိုမ်ိဳး element ေတြကို ဦးစားေပးစားသံုးလာတယ္။ ဒီ အဂၤါရပ္ေတြ အကုန္လံုးကို မွတ္တမ္းတင္ၿပီး ဆင္တူရိုးမွားဇာတ္လမ္းေတြကို ကိုယ္႕ဖာသာကိုယ္ ၿပန္လည္ တည္ေဆာက္ဖို႕အားသန္လာတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာ “ဆင္တူရိုးမွား” လို႕ဆိုရာမွာ တကယ္ေတာ႕ အစစ္ နဲ႕ အတုႀကားက နယ္ၿခားမ်ဥ္းက တၿဖည္းၿဖည္းတိုက္စားၿခင္းခံလာရတယ္။ fanmade ဇာတ္လမ္းေတြက စားသံုးသူေစ်းကြက္ထဲကို မူရင္းဇာတ္လမ္းေတြမထြက္ခင္ကတည္းက ၿပန္႕ႏွံ႕ေနၿပီ။ anime ေတြကို ထုတ္လုပ္တဲ႕ စတူဒီယိုေတြကလည္း ဒါမ်ိဳးကိစၥကို ခြင္႕ၿပဳရံုမက fan ေတြဆီက စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ယူၿပီး ေနာက္ရာသီထြက္မယ္႕စီးရီးထဲမွာ ဘယ္လိုဇာတ္ေကာင္ေတြပါမယ္၊ ဘယ္လိုဇာတ္လမ္းဆက္မယ္ဆိုတာ ဆံုးၿဖတ္လာႀကတယ္။ ေၿမပံုဟာ နယ္နမိတ္ၿဖစ္လာတယ္။ ထုတ္ကုန္ေတြကို “အစစ္”နဲ႕ယွဥ္ၿပီး တန္ဖိုးမၿဖတ္ပဲ ေဒတာေဘ႕စ္ကေန ဘယ္ေလာက္ကြာေဝးသလဲတိုင္းတာၿပီး အကဲၿဖတ္လာႀကတယ္။
ဒီေလာက္ဆိုရင္ Azuma ရဲ႕သီအိုရီ ၿပီးရင္ စာအုပ္ရဲ႕ေခါင္းစဥ္က ဘာကို ဆိုလိုသလဲဆိုတာ အနည္းငယ္ တီးေခါက္မိမယ္ထင္ပါတယ္။ သာမန္စာဖတ္သူေတြနဲ႕ ပို႕စ္ေမာဒန္ဒသန ၊ အေဆာက္အအံုလြန္ဝါဒနဲ႕႔ပတ္သက္တဲ႕ ပညာရပ္ဆိုင္ရာစာေပေတြ နဲ႕လံုးဝ မထိေတြ႕ဘူးရင္ေတာင္ ဂ်ာနယ္လစ္စတိုင္နဲ႕ အခ်က္အလက္ေတြကို တင္ျပထားတာေႀကာင္႕ဖတ္ရတာ ေခ်ာေခ်ာလ်ဳလ်ဳရိွမွာပါ။ Baudrillard ၊ Lyotard ၊ Zizek စတဲ႕ နာမည္ႀကီး လူမႈဒသနပညာရွင္ေတြရဲ႕ အယူအဆေတြကို ရွည္လ်ားစြာ ရွင္းၿပ��ေနပဲ သင္႕ေလ်ာ္သလို ကိုးကားထားတာကို ေတြ႕ရတယ္ (ဥပမာ Baudrillard ဆီကေန “simulacrum” အစစ္မရိွေတာ႕တဲ႕ဆင္တူယိုးမွား ဆိုတဲ႕ အယူအဆကို ေခ်းငွားထားတယ္)။ အိုကာကုေတြကေတာ႕ သူတို႕အေပၚ Azuma ရႈၿမင္တဲ႕အၿမင္ကို သိပ္ၿပီး ႀကိဳက္လွမယ္မထင္ဘူး။ Azuma ကုိယ္တိုင္က အိုတာကု “စစ္စစ္” မဟုတ္သလို academic စစ္လည္းမဟုတ္တဲ႕အတြက္ေႀကာင္႕ပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ္႕ Azuma ကေတာ႕ တန္းဖိုးၿဖတ္ေဝဖန္မႈေတြမပါပဲ လက္ရိွၿဖစ္အင္ကို သီအိုရီနည္းအရ ဦညြတ္တဲ႕နည္းနဲ႕ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္ထားတဲ႕လို႕က်ေနာ္ၿမင္တယ္။ စာအုပ္အဆံုးပိုင္းက world wide web နဲ႕ အင္တာနက္အေပၚသံုးသပ္ခ်က္ေတြကေတာ႕ ေခတ္ေနာက္ေနၿပီ ခံစားရတယ္ (ဒါကေတာ႕ Azuma အၿပစ္မဟုတ္ေပဘူး။ မူရင္းစာအုပ္က ၂၀၀၂ မွာထြက္ခဲ႕တာကိုး)။ အိုတာကု subculture နဲ႕ postmodernity ရဲ႕ ဆက္သြယ္ခ်က္ေတြအေႀကာင္း စိတ္ဝင္စားတဲ႕သူတိုင္း ဖတ္ရႈဖို႕တိုက္တြန္းလိုပါတယ္။
March 15, 2015
I mentioned to someone how I was reading this book about how Japanese pop culture fans like to "remix" what they're reading into parodies and spinoffs.
My friend said to me, "Oh, you mean like how the Tale of Genji was read in the Edo period?"
I wish I could remember which of my friends said this, but they cut right through Azuma's BS for me. Indeed, a well-researched book was just published on the Genji subject: The Tale of Genji: Translation, Canonization, and World Literature
"Otaku" is a pretty interesting book for understanding and interpreting writers like Derrida and Kojéve, but it is not the best book in that category, and Azuma's ideas of what make otaku unique are fairly dubious. It's an entertaining read, but take it with a heap of salt.
My friend said to me, "Oh, you mean like how the Tale of Genji was read in the Edo period?"
I wish I could remember which of my friends said this, but they cut right through Azuma's BS for me. Indeed, a well-researched book was just published on the Genji subject: The Tale of Genji: Translation, Canonization, and World Literature
"Otaku" is a pretty interesting book for understanding and interpreting writers like Derrida and Kojéve, but it is not the best book in that category, and Azuma's ideas of what make otaku unique are fairly dubious. It's an entertaining read, but take it with a heap of salt.
June 8, 2025
out of date and inaccurate to both my experience and the experience of others. contains some useful analysis but azuma is an outsider to these communities and peers at them through a lens that at times actually repels me. he's very much caught in the surrounding discourse of otaku and helped perpetuate many ideas about it; i can't lie, i did resent being told to read this when i was studying for my ma degree.
November 26, 2019
Rhizome? You're no longer my friend. Database animal is now my friend.
Read
May 17, 2018(cross posted from Medium)
I recently finished reading Hiroki Azuma’s book Otaku: Japan’s Databse Animals, a study of the group of social miscreants and deviants known as otaku, and it was like reading a prophecy. In the West the term “otaku” has been used to refer specifically to dedicated fans of manga and anime, but in Japan it refers to obsessive and socially withdrawn fans of everything from video games to trains. Azuma argues that what defines their otaku is not their level or choice of obsession, but rather their way of consuming media. He suggests that rather than relating to the emotional or thematic content of a story, otaku are attracted to particular characters and tropes which can be endlessly reiterated and re-contextualized. For Azuma this approach stems from the disappearance of master narratives such as religion and ideology in postmodernity, and leads people to be less “human” (invested in larger ideals) and more “animal” (invested in immediate and superficial satisfaction.) Azuma borrows his peculiar use of these terms from the French philosopher Alexandre Kojeve, but the pejorative term of the designation of otaku as “animals” is hard to avoid.
Azuma’s book was published in Japan in 2001, upon which it became a bestseller. Despite the seventeen-year gap, however, I found myself constantly shocked with the contemporary resonances. In part, this may be because I am something of an otaku myself. When Otaku came out in 2001, I was in the midst of a love affair with Pokemon and Digimon that would lead me towards an obsession with Japanese cartoons, comics and video games that persists to this day. I certainly have the antisocial and obsessive part of otaku-dom down. And as for being a database animal, you only have to look at my spreadsheets of movies and television sorted by grade and length to realize that I am, at the very least, a methodical consumer of media.
Beyond my own personal circumstances, the otaku media world that Azuma describes is very reminiscent of mainstream Western (and increasingly global) culture. It’s not just outcasts who see media as collections of familiar fragments that can be combined into a database — it’s aggregator sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, which by virtue of their seeming objectivity now dictate large swathes of consumer choice and critical debate. And popular films, particularly franchise blockbusters arranged into “cinematic universes”, are increasingly catering to a world that consumes them in otaku-like way.
When we go to see a franchise film, we are not looking to appreciate the story as a whole — the plot is usually generic and the character arcs gestural at best. Rather, we are looking for fragments that appeal to us. They can be moments of recognition, such as familiar characters, beloved actors or minority representation, or they can be moments of pleasure, such as the witty quips that Marvel movies are jammed full of. These fragments quickly become isolated from the supposed whole and re-circulated as memes and references.
As in Azuma, these fragments are placed not in a conventional narrative arc but a greater database-like non-narrative — the cinematic universe, the review aggregators, or the culture war. The latter example may be surprising, but evaluating a text by its external relationships — how its’ fans behave, whether a writer is a dick on Twitter, how it deals with particular elements that are not its focus — is exactly the kind of otaku-like approach that Azuma defines. Mass culture is now otaku culture, and the otaku have nothing left but social isolation and their resentment.
Despite its seemingly prophetic nature, I found it hard to get fully on board with the argument of Otaku. For one thing, I think Azuma overstates the novelty of this way of consuming and producing texts — is there anything more consciously artificial and fragmentary than the 1940s Hollywood musical? It’s also worth noting that otaku culture, rather than descending into an unending pit of referentiality, has also evolved quite a bit over the years, with the paradigm genre shifting from mecha (70s-80s) to harem romance (90s) to moe cute-girls-doing-cute-things (2000s) to isekai in-another-world fantasies(2010s.) Of these genres, the moe that Azuma clinicizes is in my opinion actually the least pernicious and most frequently avoids misogyny and power fantasy.
My biggest bone to pick with Azuma, however, is the overly moralistic way in which he presents otaku as unemotional “animals.” Like Frederic Jameson, Azuma sees postmodernity as a kind of tragedy, a cross-cultural loss of innocence that deprived people of the nice sentimental, human narratives they had been enjoying and lead them into an age of affectless cynicism. But in my experience otaku are the exact opposite of robot-like consumers who receive everything at two removes. Here, for example, is a brief passage from Azuma:
The otaku themselves called this new consumer behavior “chara — moe” — the feeling of moe toward characters and their alluring characteristics. As previously mentioned, here the otaku coolly consumed only the information that was behind the works without relation to the narrative or message of those works.
The way Azuma describes it, any set of traits could have been used for building the database. However, otaku attachment to anime tropes is anything but cool detachment. It’s often rooted in deep emotional relationships and trauma, usually that of the isolation so commonly associated with otaku lives. For instance, the high school setting is so universal in otaku-friendly anime and manga because it represents the last time the otaku was immersed (involuntarily) in a web of rich social relations and structure. The character of the sister is fetishized because it’s likely to be the shut-in viewer’s strongest connection with someone of the opposite sex from the same generation. Japan’s deeply-entrenched gender roles are also deeply involved in the type of anime characters that become popular. In other words, the attachment to these tropes is anything but unemotional and non-ideological.
And then there’s the fact that those same qualities that lead me to diagnose myself as an otaku — my obsessiveness, compulsion to organize, and social indifference — lead a psychiatrist to diagnose me with Asperger’s Syndrome in my teens. Azuma’s description of otaku-dom sounds a lot like a description of autism, which is often defined by a lack of conventional affect and a tendency to fixate on nerdy, subcultural hobbies. If we accept this, then his description of database consumption as “animal” and sentimental investment in narratives as “human” becomes not just needlessly moralistic but cruelly ableist. To define otakudom in opposition to humanity, presumably defined by the ability to make smalltalk and cry at a good tearjerker, is to cast non-neurotypical people as not just abberrant but indicative of social decay.
As noted above, I think the mode of interpretation and consumption that Azuma describes is real, and increasingly prevalent. But rather than seeing this prevalence as a decline from some era of humanistic compassion, I think we should recognize that the database-driven approach of consumption has its own merits, and humanistic interpretation (which certainly has not gone way) its weaknesses. I’m of the view that the more tools we have in the interpretive toolbox the better. So we may simply have to accept that some people watch television looking for a good story and others do it looking for a compelling fragment. But I don’t think my view will be very popular. After all, what’s less otaku-like than agreeing to disagree?
I recently finished reading Hiroki Azuma’s book Otaku: Japan’s Databse Animals, a study of the group of social miscreants and deviants known as otaku, and it was like reading a prophecy. In the West the term “otaku” has been used to refer specifically to dedicated fans of manga and anime, but in Japan it refers to obsessive and socially withdrawn fans of everything from video games to trains. Azuma argues that what defines their otaku is not their level or choice of obsession, but rather their way of consuming media. He suggests that rather than relating to the emotional or thematic content of a story, otaku are attracted to particular characters and tropes which can be endlessly reiterated and re-contextualized. For Azuma this approach stems from the disappearance of master narratives such as religion and ideology in postmodernity, and leads people to be less “human” (invested in larger ideals) and more “animal” (invested in immediate and superficial satisfaction.) Azuma borrows his peculiar use of these terms from the French philosopher Alexandre Kojeve, but the pejorative term of the designation of otaku as “animals” is hard to avoid.
Azuma’s book was published in Japan in 2001, upon which it became a bestseller. Despite the seventeen-year gap, however, I found myself constantly shocked with the contemporary resonances. In part, this may be because I am something of an otaku myself. When Otaku came out in 2001, I was in the midst of a love affair with Pokemon and Digimon that would lead me towards an obsession with Japanese cartoons, comics and video games that persists to this day. I certainly have the antisocial and obsessive part of otaku-dom down. And as for being a database animal, you only have to look at my spreadsheets of movies and television sorted by grade and length to realize that I am, at the very least, a methodical consumer of media.
Beyond my own personal circumstances, the otaku media world that Azuma describes is very reminiscent of mainstream Western (and increasingly global) culture. It’s not just outcasts who see media as collections of familiar fragments that can be combined into a database — it’s aggregator sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, which by virtue of their seeming objectivity now dictate large swathes of consumer choice and critical debate. And popular films, particularly franchise blockbusters arranged into “cinematic universes”, are increasingly catering to a world that consumes them in otaku-like way.
When we go to see a franchise film, we are not looking to appreciate the story as a whole — the plot is usually generic and the character arcs gestural at best. Rather, we are looking for fragments that appeal to us. They can be moments of recognition, such as familiar characters, beloved actors or minority representation, or they can be moments of pleasure, such as the witty quips that Marvel movies are jammed full of. These fragments quickly become isolated from the supposed whole and re-circulated as memes and references.
As in Azuma, these fragments are placed not in a conventional narrative arc but a greater database-like non-narrative — the cinematic universe, the review aggregators, or the culture war. The latter example may be surprising, but evaluating a text by its external relationships — how its’ fans behave, whether a writer is a dick on Twitter, how it deals with particular elements that are not its focus — is exactly the kind of otaku-like approach that Azuma defines. Mass culture is now otaku culture, and the otaku have nothing left but social isolation and their resentment.
Despite its seemingly prophetic nature, I found it hard to get fully on board with the argument of Otaku. For one thing, I think Azuma overstates the novelty of this way of consuming and producing texts — is there anything more consciously artificial and fragmentary than the 1940s Hollywood musical? It’s also worth noting that otaku culture, rather than descending into an unending pit of referentiality, has also evolved quite a bit over the years, with the paradigm genre shifting from mecha (70s-80s) to harem romance (90s) to moe cute-girls-doing-cute-things (2000s) to isekai in-another-world fantasies(2010s.) Of these genres, the moe that Azuma clinicizes is in my opinion actually the least pernicious and most frequently avoids misogyny and power fantasy.
My biggest bone to pick with Azuma, however, is the overly moralistic way in which he presents otaku as unemotional “animals.” Like Frederic Jameson, Azuma sees postmodernity as a kind of tragedy, a cross-cultural loss of innocence that deprived people of the nice sentimental, human narratives they had been enjoying and lead them into an age of affectless cynicism. But in my experience otaku are the exact opposite of robot-like consumers who receive everything at two removes. Here, for example, is a brief passage from Azuma:
The otaku themselves called this new consumer behavior “chara — moe” — the feeling of moe toward characters and their alluring characteristics. As previously mentioned, here the otaku coolly consumed only the information that was behind the works without relation to the narrative or message of those works.
The way Azuma describes it, any set of traits could have been used for building the database. However, otaku attachment to anime tropes is anything but cool detachment. It’s often rooted in deep emotional relationships and trauma, usually that of the isolation so commonly associated with otaku lives. For instance, the high school setting is so universal in otaku-friendly anime and manga because it represents the last time the otaku was immersed (involuntarily) in a web of rich social relations and structure. The character of the sister is fetishized because it’s likely to be the shut-in viewer’s strongest connection with someone of the opposite sex from the same generation. Japan’s deeply-entrenched gender roles are also deeply involved in the type of anime characters that become popular. In other words, the attachment to these tropes is anything but unemotional and non-ideological.
And then there’s the fact that those same qualities that lead me to diagnose myself as an otaku — my obsessiveness, compulsion to organize, and social indifference — lead a psychiatrist to diagnose me with Asperger’s Syndrome in my teens. Azuma’s description of otaku-dom sounds a lot like a description of autism, which is often defined by a lack of conventional affect and a tendency to fixate on nerdy, subcultural hobbies. If we accept this, then his description of database consumption as “animal” and sentimental investment in narratives as “human” becomes not just needlessly moralistic but cruelly ableist. To define otakudom in opposition to humanity, presumably defined by the ability to make smalltalk and cry at a good tearjerker, is to cast non-neurotypical people as not just abberrant but indicative of social decay.
As noted above, I think the mode of interpretation and consumption that Azuma describes is real, and increasingly prevalent. But rather than seeing this prevalence as a decline from some era of humanistic compassion, I think we should recognize that the database-driven approach of consumption has its own merits, and humanistic interpretation (which certainly has not gone way) its weaknesses. I’m of the view that the more tools we have in the interpretive toolbox the better. So we may simply have to accept that some people watch television looking for a good story and others do it looking for a compelling fragment. But I don’t think my view will be very popular. After all, what’s less otaku-like than agreeing to disagree?
November 22, 2010
Baudrillard... scelgo te!!!
Traduzione in inglese del celebre(?) Dōbutsuka suru posutomodan (動物化するポストモダン), di Azuma Hiroki.
Traduzione in inglese del celebre(?) Dōbutsuka suru posutomodan (動物化するポストモダン), di Azuma Hiroki.
I pro.
Azuma offre una brevissima cronistoria critica dell'approccio otaku all'animazione giapponese, e dei legami tra i due, cronistoria ben più sensata di quanto si legge di solito sull'argomento; difatti prende una decisa posizione contro il punto di vista continuista, cioè quello che vede l'animazione e il fumetto giappi eredi diretti (di solito non viene neanche spiegato in che modo) delle arti popolari dell'epoca Edo.
Per Azuma, invece, animazione e fumetto giappi contemporanei nascono in seguito alla frattura culturale della II Guerra Mondiale e a una massiccia appropriazione, poi rielaborata e infine negata e rimossa, della cultura di massa U.S.A. (non certo quindi delle arti Tokugawa). Personalmente condivido più quanto dice qui Azuma che l'ipotesi continuista, quella portata avanti soprattutto da Ōtsuka Eiji, Okada Toshio e Murakami Takashi. Di solito sono questi, quelli più citati al di fuori del Giappone, soprattutto l'ultimo. Speriamo che la traduzione del libro di Azuma riesca a riequilibrare il discorso.
Di questo si parla soprattutto nella prima parte del libro di Azuma.
I contro.
Nella seconda parte, si dà il via a un discutibile pippone teorico.
Azuma invoca, a mo' di Pokémon estratti dalle pokeball, anzi, dalle sfere poké, i classici maestri di postmoderno e affini, affinché combattano al suo fianco: "Baudrillard... scelgo te!!!". Il postmoderno è quella grande narrazione che proclama la fine delle grandi narrazioni, è quello storicismo estremo che annunzia la morte d'ogni storicismo, è uno degli ultimi zombie inconsapevoli posseduti dallo spettro hegeliano che, ancora non esorcizzato, si aggira per l'Europa.
Azuma quindi, che fa? Prende quattro o cinque titoli, tra animazione e videogiochi, e li analizza per "dimostrare" non solo che queste opere corrispondono in maniera squisita alla logica postmoderna, ma riflettono e dispiegano come prismi quella luce che permea tutto il mondo attuale. Quindi guardando alcuni episodî di DiGi Chara, giuocando a qualche visual novel un po' ecchi, o osservando come si muovono gli otaku giappi tra i banchetti delle fiere, possiamo cogliere lo zeitgeist di un'intera epoca, la nostra e, anzi, dell'intero Mondo a venire, nel futuro. In cui si preannuncia nientepopodimenoché la morte dell'Uomo. Effettivamente, dopo che Nietzsche ed epigoni avevano proclamato quella di Nostro Signore Iddío, bisogna pur rivolgersi a qualcosa d'altro.
Peccato che Azuma vada a scegliersi guarda caso quegli esempî utili al suo discorso, scordandosi le quantità notevoli di possibili contr'esempî. Peccato soprattutto che Azuma spacci per temperie globale e pietra miliare d'una svolta epocale quelle che sono pratiche di consumo segmentali che ricorrono e tornano e ritornano un po' in tutti gli ambiti della cultura pop, già in tempi non sospetti (a volere si potrebbe anche risalire al romanzo d'appendice ottocentesco).
E anche tra trent'anni o quarant'anni (sempre ch'esista ancora il Mondo), ci sarà di nuovo chi scriverà libri in cui scambierà i ricorsi del proprio decennio come inaudite novità che segnano il termine della Storia. E il libro di Azuma, allora, sarà visto più come un oggetto dei nostri tempi sintomo di questa necessità, che una descrizione utile degli stessi tempi in cui si situa.
April 27, 2011
"As a result, instead of narratives creating characters, it became a general strategy to create character settings first, followed by works and projects, including the stories..."
I'm a lapsed anime fan. I spent 2002-2006 wondering why all the series out were so terrible. As Azuma puts it: "from the beginning the sense of realism in otaku genres has been weak; in many cases, even original works create worlds through citation and imitation of previous works." I could not agree more...
According to Azuma's theory, an anime or game setting exists as a kind of imaginary "database", which you can't own. But by capturing all 500 Pokemon or watching every episode, you can collect "cross-sectional" fragments of a grand narrative.
This framework is useful for understanding questions that always bugged me about Gundam SEED and its sequel... such as the seemingly random existence of Newtypes (Rey, Rau, Mwu), etc. Like the Zaku and even certain elements of the plot (begin in space, etc), the Newtype flash was part of the 'database' of Gundam information which is tapped by successive series, even when they bear no relation to the original continuity.
-85-86, money quote: "Although I can only analyze otaku culture in this book, I think that more broadly this disassociative coexistence of the desire for a small narrative at the level of simulacra and the desire for a grand nonnarrative at the level of database is a structure that generally characterizes subjectivity in postmodern society."
Come to think of it, this perfectly characterizes the behavior of gamers who (for instance) study all possible Rage abilities in FF6 and use the knowledge to build strategies for a game played under a self-imposed constraint: under 13 hours, complete the game with only 4 characters, level limit, etc.
This book is a must read for anyone who used to be into anime but wondered what happened. (Other than "growing up.") I will say that the jargon flies thick and fast sometimes. And there is this laughable line:
"...however, since his distinction is too intricate for our purposes, I rephrased them with the technical terminology of Lacanian psychoanalysis."
Gimme a break! Still, a great read.
I'm a lapsed anime fan. I spent 2002-2006 wondering why all the series out were so terrible. As Azuma puts it: "from the beginning the sense of realism in otaku genres has been weak; in many cases, even original works create worlds through citation and imitation of previous works." I could not agree more...
According to Azuma's theory, an anime or game setting exists as a kind of imaginary "database", which you can't own. But by capturing all 500 Pokemon or watching every episode, you can collect "cross-sectional" fragments of a grand narrative.
This framework is useful for understanding questions that always bugged me about Gundam SEED and its sequel... such as the seemingly random existence of Newtypes (Rey, Rau, Mwu), etc. Like the Zaku and even certain elements of the plot (begin in space, etc), the Newtype flash was part of the 'database' of Gundam information which is tapped by successive series, even when they bear no relation to the original continuity.
-85-86, money quote: "Although I can only analyze otaku culture in this book, I think that more broadly this disassociative coexistence of the desire for a small narrative at the level of simulacra and the desire for a grand nonnarrative at the level of database is a structure that generally characterizes subjectivity in postmodern society."
Come to think of it, this perfectly characterizes the behavior of gamers who (for instance) study all possible Rage abilities in FF6 and use the knowledge to build strategies for a game played under a self-imposed constraint: under 13 hours, complete the game with only 4 characters, level limit, etc.
This book is a must read for anyone who used to be into anime but wondered what happened. (Other than "growing up.") I will say that the jargon flies thick and fast sometimes. And there is this laughable line:
"...however, since his distinction is too intricate for our purposes, I rephrased them with the technical terminology of Lacanian psychoanalysis."
Gimme a break! Still, a great read.
May 11, 2022
The book launched in 2001 and gives perspective on the 1970-1990 otaku generation. It's helpful to know how they came to be, but I can't really recontextualize several of the concepts into the current year.
For example, the existence of database sites like MAL and Anilist -- what part of them that is the "outer layer", specifically?
Also, those kinds of site facilitate profile-building (among otaku) that helps with personal identity and gives a sense of belonging, how does this relates to "animalization", specifically? Like, is excessive consumption the precise word for animalization? Because I think profile-building like that are somewhat integral for humans in the 21st century, as our lives are becoming more digital.
Questions regarding the next type of otaku also arise, e.g, with the trend of isekai genres, which I find many people have been critical of, along with the title, say, Mushoku Tensei.
Several things came off as unclear to me too, and I think I needed a contemporary comparison between anime that have a grand narrative and one that has not. A good example of one that has a grand narrative is needed. For me, I'm currently thinking of something like Madoka Magica and K-ON!, for example.
Madoka Magica is famous for being a deconstruction of the Mahou Shoujo genre, does deconstruction that the show does count as being a grand narrative, or is that just a database item? K-ON! on the other hand, is filled with moe-elements all around, my question was: what if this kind of thing is precisely what gives people meaning and enjoyment? Why only see it through the lens of "animalization" -- is the anime that constitute of moe-elements for being moe's sake, wrong?
I'm also interested in the question of whether following a specific creator's works and immersing ourselves in their "philosophy" of animation and writing are considered to be following a grand narrative (through some prophets or some sorts). For example, most of Hayao Miyazaki's works are said to be about environmentalism, is that amount to following a grand narrative?
For example, the existence of database sites like MAL and Anilist -- what part of them that is the "outer layer", specifically?
Also, those kinds of site facilitate profile-building (among otaku) that helps with personal identity and gives a sense of belonging, how does this relates to "animalization", specifically? Like, is excessive consumption the precise word for animalization? Because I think profile-building like that are somewhat integral for humans in the 21st century, as our lives are becoming more digital.
Questions regarding the next type of otaku also arise, e.g, with the trend of isekai genres, which I find many people have been critical of, along with the title, say, Mushoku Tensei.
Several things came off as unclear to me too, and I think I needed a contemporary comparison between anime that have a grand narrative and one that has not. A good example of one that has a grand narrative is needed. For me, I'm currently thinking of something like Madoka Magica and K-ON!, for example.
Madoka Magica is famous for being a deconstruction of the Mahou Shoujo genre, does deconstruction that the show does count as being a grand narrative, or is that just a database item? K-ON! on the other hand, is filled with moe-elements all around, my question was: what if this kind of thing is precisely what gives people meaning and enjoyment? Why only see it through the lens of "animalization" -- is the anime that constitute of moe-elements for being moe's sake, wrong?
I'm also interested in the question of whether following a specific creator's works and immersing ourselves in their "philosophy" of animation and writing are considered to be following a grand narrative (through some prophets or some sorts). For example, most of Hayao Miyazaki's works are said to be about environmentalism, is that amount to following a grand narrative?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 16, 2015
Other reviews get the point across pretty well. Some arguments are overly-represented or fuzzy, but the writing is a deliberate attempt to be clear.
I'd be interested to see more contemporary writings. This is from 2001, and while it has very interesting analyses of novel games from that era, since then we've seen a huge boom in public visibility of video games, formation of 'classic gamers' and 'contemporary gamer' subgroups, etc. I was too young in 2001 to really know how those groups compare to now, but the phenomenon he mentions about otaku centering around anime and the 'girl games', certainly exists in a wide variety of media today. Just look at any recent argument over the newest "Smash Bros" character, the fights between groups of game fandoms, the obsession with digging through games' secrets, the way we market games as bullet lists of features.
The way fans of games obsess over the next iteration's changes - will shields be better? will this gun have the same recoil? etc.
More salient is how we represent ourselves on social media or resumes - bullet point lists, as a set of retweets, liked posts, liked pages, or shares - sets of small sentences, etc.
It's a very short read and despite its shortcomings, sheds light on contemporary consumption patterns, so is worth reading.
I'd be interested to see more contemporary writings. This is from 2001, and while it has very interesting analyses of novel games from that era, since then we've seen a huge boom in public visibility of video games, formation of 'classic gamers' and 'contemporary gamer' subgroups, etc. I was too young in 2001 to really know how those groups compare to now, but the phenomenon he mentions about otaku centering around anime and the 'girl games', certainly exists in a wide variety of media today. Just look at any recent argument over the newest "Smash Bros" character, the fights between groups of game fandoms, the obsession with digging through games' secrets, the way we market games as bullet lists of features.
The way fans of games obsess over the next iteration's changes - will shields be better? will this gun have the same recoil? etc.
More salient is how we represent ourselves on social media or resumes - bullet point lists, as a set of retweets, liked posts, liked pages, or shares - sets of small sentences, etc.
It's a very short read and despite its shortcomings, sheds light on contemporary consumption patterns, so is worth reading.
February 26, 2022
I read this book because I hoped that it would provide an introduction to the world of manga and animé which the members of my extended family who are 30 to 50 years yonger than I am seem to enjoy. Unfortunately I have not personally consumed enough of this culture to be able to judge Azuma's conclusions. However, I found the book to be great fun to read. I also have to acknowledge that the author understands French philosophy and criticism very well which inspires confidence in what he has to say about Japan.
Azuma uses the term "Otaku" to a movement that I asscoiate with Manga, Japanese computer games and animé. His big thesis is that "Otaku" is the first and purest form of Postmodern cultural production in that it abandons the great narrative (the defining characteristic of Modern culture) for the database that generates an infinite number of simulacra. Azuma argues that "Otaku" culture is pseudo-Japanese rather than authentically Japanese. "Otaku" as form of postmodern culture first appeared in Japan because the trauma of the defeat of WWII destroyed modern culture in Japan thirty years before in died in the west.
This could be all balderash but it certainly provided me with a lens through which I could observe Japanese youth culture.
Azuma uses the term "Otaku" to a movement that I asscoiate with Manga, Japanese computer games and animé. His big thesis is that "Otaku" is the first and purest form of Postmodern cultural production in that it abandons the great narrative (the defining characteristic of Modern culture) for the database that generates an infinite number of simulacra. Azuma argues that "Otaku" culture is pseudo-Japanese rather than authentically Japanese. "Otaku" as form of postmodern culture first appeared in Japan because the trauma of the defeat of WWII destroyed modern culture in Japan thirty years before in died in the west.
This could be all balderash but it certainly provided me with a lens through which I could observe Japanese youth culture.
June 27, 2018
This book needs some serious editing, structuring and explaining of presumptions it utilises (e.g. not everyone is familiar with works of mentioned philosophers). It presented some concepts that I honestly did not grasp at all but this does not necessarily make them less plausible - the author just generally lacks in the field of coherent, argumented discourse.
I do not recommend this book to readers who are completely unfamiliar with Japan and anime subculture. I got through it solely on my deep interest in the subject, however I did not feel particularly enlightened afterwards.
A clear summary and overview of base ideas of this book (as it does have moments of brilliant insight) would be more valuable than the original, which is ironic since the author postulates a natural creation of simulacra in the postmodern era.
I do not recommend this book to readers who are completely unfamiliar with Japan and anime subculture. I got through it solely on my deep interest in the subject, however I did not feel particularly enlightened afterwards.
A clear summary and overview of base ideas of this book (as it does have moments of brilliant insight) would be more valuable than the original, which is ironic since the author postulates a natural creation of simulacra in the postmodern era.
November 9, 2024
Some really cool stuff re: consumerism here that I think is relevant across all fandom in 2024. The postmodern idea that "we buy figurines of our favorite characters because that is how we understand and relate to the larger meta-narrative" is a fun way to think about "me love pikachu and must have plushie" and it's cool to see that Taken Seriously instead of just kicked around as corny geek culture. (Which like: it is! But there has to be some human truths going on there?)
Ditto the stuff about why so many anime characters look alike; it's not "just the style," the semiotics might actually be fundamental to the reasons otaku (and weeb) culture persists at all.
Loved the history lesson that positioned the rise of anime as specifically nationalistic and anti-American, while also bastardizing so much of the animation technology coming out of Hollywood. Hell yeah brother that 80s bubble's never gonna burst!
Not every section lands one country and two decades away from this thing's publication but it's worth a skim for anyone who has ever owned Neon Genesis Evangelion merch.
Ditto the stuff about why so many anime characters look alike; it's not "just the style," the semiotics might actually be fundamental to the reasons otaku (and weeb) culture persists at all.
Loved the history lesson that positioned the rise of anime as specifically nationalistic and anti-American, while also bastardizing so much of the animation technology coming out of Hollywood. Hell yeah brother that 80s bubble's never gonna burst!
Not every section lands one country and two decades away from this thing's publication but it's worth a skim for anyone who has ever owned Neon Genesis Evangelion merch.
August 18, 2025
Tesi interessante, che ripete incessantemente lungo tutto il libro. Però alla fine parla di noi quindi non posso dare voto più basso dj questo.
July 10, 2024
We have, in postmodernity, given up on the attempt to ‘estrange’ our daily life and see it in new, poetic or nightmarish, ways; we have given up the analysis of it in terms of the commodity form, in a situation in which everything by now is a commodity; we have abandoned the quest for new languages to describe the stream of the self-same or new psychologies to diagnose its distressingly unoriginal reactions and psychic events. All that is left is to itemise them, to list the items that come by. - Fredric Jameson
When we are within franchise thinking, the illusion is that each new product discloses something new about a teleologically-constructed universe/multiverse. And the bounds of such universes are determined by ownership: property rights. - supermechagodzilla
In bourgeois societies the economic fictio juris prevails, that every one, as a buyer, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of commodities. - Marx
Those were some fun epigraphs I thought of while reading.
2001! Isn’t this such a prescient book? For example, are Star Wars fans not currently review bombing The Acolyte for supposedly featuring Ki-Adi-Mundi a few decades before his “canonical” birth? According to them, this failure to adhere to the text of an ancillary site known as Wookiepedia is the result of a DEI conspiracy. On the other hand, they love shows like Ahsoka, with little or no coherent narrative, but which feature Dave Filoni’s pet characters configured and smashed together into a setting under the semblance of a plot, like how I played with my Lego figurines when I was a kid. As Azuma explains, the pleasure of a work now comes from fidelity to the database.
He asserts that, rather than the relation between ‘original’ and ‘copy,’ the antinomy between ‘simulacra’ and ‘database’ is what characterizes media consumption under our conditions of postmodernity. (I have not read that much postmodernism, maybe that Jameson essay a few years ago, so bear with me.) By database, Azuma presumes a database of “characters, settings, and moe-elements,” where consumed works are not judged by authorship (the author really is dead now) or narrative quality, but by the emotional response elicited by the bricolage of “moe-elements” (think cat-ears, colored hair, unnaturally big eyes, flush cheeks, shy demeanor, etc) that constitute the characters and setting (we are advised to read 'setting' in the contemporary computational sense of the word, too) of the work. A collection of deeply emotional “small narratives” is created from the “grand non-narrative” of the database. When otaku talk about how such and such a work is deep or profound, they really make a judgement on the combination of moe-elements that figure as the work. Azuma explains that the category of moe-elements is not a “simple fetish object, but a sign that emerged through market principles.” He calls this endless consumption of combinations of moe-elements “animalization”, governed by a binary logic of lack and satisfaction unconcerned with the desire of the other.
Azuma is quite bleak about the otakus’ sociality. Sure, they engage in human communication, but kinship ties and local community have been replaced by “exchanges of information.” They maintain the appearance of sociality as mimicry, but the content of sociality has been replaced by a foundation of “individual volition,” a “virtual, emptied-out humanity.” I’m reminded of the Manifesto once again, with all that is solid melting into air, leaving “no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’.” Fortunately for the otakus, Azuma implies that database animality is not an insular freak phenomenon, but rather the new model of desire and sociality for us postmoderns. And as a child who grew up ravenously consuming the various elements catalogued, detailed, and extracted from on Bulbapedia, Wookiepedia, Halopedia, etc, I am inclined to agree. We are all database animals!
I’m disappointed the book didn’t bring up copyright or otaku sexuality more… I guess the latter is its own wormhole. Saitō Tamaki gets a critical mention but not much else. There is also the question of otaku as consumers and producers, which would make a discussion of the Californian Ideology and commodity fetishism very fruitful. Unfortunately, Azuma does not expand along this route. But he leaves the door open after a short read, which is appreciated.
When we are within franchise thinking, the illusion is that each new product discloses something new about a teleologically-constructed universe/multiverse. And the bounds of such universes are determined by ownership: property rights. - supermechagodzilla
In bourgeois societies the economic fictio juris prevails, that every one, as a buyer, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of commodities. - Marx
Those were some fun epigraphs I thought of while reading.
2001! Isn’t this such a prescient book? For example, are Star Wars fans not currently review bombing The Acolyte for supposedly featuring Ki-Adi-Mundi a few decades before his “canonical” birth? According to them, this failure to adhere to the text of an ancillary site known as Wookiepedia is the result of a DEI conspiracy. On the other hand, they love shows like Ahsoka, with little or no coherent narrative, but which feature Dave Filoni’s pet characters configured and smashed together into a setting under the semblance of a plot, like how I played with my Lego figurines when I was a kid. As Azuma explains, the pleasure of a work now comes from fidelity to the database.
He asserts that, rather than the relation between ‘original’ and ‘copy,’ the antinomy between ‘simulacra’ and ‘database’ is what characterizes media consumption under our conditions of postmodernity. (I have not read that much postmodernism, maybe that Jameson essay a few years ago, so bear with me.) By database, Azuma presumes a database of “characters, settings, and moe-elements,” where consumed works are not judged by authorship (the author really is dead now) or narrative quality, but by the emotional response elicited by the bricolage of “moe-elements” (think cat-ears, colored hair, unnaturally big eyes, flush cheeks, shy demeanor, etc) that constitute the characters and setting (we are advised to read 'setting' in the contemporary computational sense of the word, too) of the work. A collection of deeply emotional “small narratives” is created from the “grand non-narrative” of the database. When otaku talk about how such and such a work is deep or profound, they really make a judgement on the combination of moe-elements that figure as the work. Azuma explains that the category of moe-elements is not a “simple fetish object, but a sign that emerged through market principles.” He calls this endless consumption of combinations of moe-elements “animalization”, governed by a binary logic of lack and satisfaction unconcerned with the desire of the other.
Azuma is quite bleak about the otakus’ sociality. Sure, they engage in human communication, but kinship ties and local community have been replaced by “exchanges of information.” They maintain the appearance of sociality as mimicry, but the content of sociality has been replaced by a foundation of “individual volition,” a “virtual, emptied-out humanity.” I’m reminded of the Manifesto once again, with all that is solid melting into air, leaving “no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’.” Fortunately for the otakus, Azuma implies that database animality is not an insular freak phenomenon, but rather the new model of desire and sociality for us postmoderns. And as a child who grew up ravenously consuming the various elements catalogued, detailed, and extracted from on Bulbapedia, Wookiepedia, Halopedia, etc, I am inclined to agree. We are all database animals!
I’m disappointed the book didn’t bring up copyright or otaku sexuality more… I guess the latter is its own wormhole. Saitō Tamaki gets a critical mention but not much else. There is also the question of otaku as consumers and producers, which would make a discussion of the Californian Ideology and commodity fetishism very fruitful. Unfortunately, Azuma does not expand along this route. But he leaves the door open after a short read, which is appreciated.
December 29, 2024
i liked the idea of this book
March 21, 2020
In the Western media, otaku tend to be men with an unhealthy interest in female characters in anime, manga and video games. In standard Japanese, “otaku” means another person’s house or family, and can be used metaphorically as a formal “you” pronoun. One explanation for how the word came to refer to fans of comics and animation is that they supposedly persisted in this formal address among themselves, even when close friends, suggesting social awkwardness. This book offers another explanation (which isn’t mutually exclusive): in the post-modern vacuum of accepted authority, the otaku construct their own group-belonging. “Otaku shut themselves into the hobby community not because they deny sociality but rather because, as social values and standards are already dysfunctional, they feel a pressing need to construct alternative values and needs.”
The book first describes the development of manga and anime, and concludes that defeat in WWII forced Japanese authors to look back to the Edo (shogunate) period for an acceptable historical backdrop. Paradoxically, the available media (comics and movies) were from the USA. Hence the creation of a “pseudo-Japan manufactured from U.S.-made material”. One example is the depiction of heroines dressed as Shinto shrine maidens (which, incidentally, suggests how much cultural depth Western readers and viewers, such as myself, are likely to miss).
The author proposes a postmodern database model of the world, contrasting with what he calls the tree model of the old “grand narratives”. The idea is that the elements in the database model aren’t structured in accordance with any higher meaning or purpose but only make sense in and between themselves. This model is likened to Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome. The author illustrates his model by reference to search websites that can classify, or search for, fictional characters according to elements (“moe”) of appearance, dress, personality and so on. (I suppose the author is describing on the dominance of this way of thinking, not claiming that it is absolutely novel. Back in the 1970s, at primary school, I was interested in the characteristics of motorbikes as described in Top Trump cards, without any narrative ideas of racing or other uses for the bikes.) The “animals” in the title come from a prediction by Alexandre Kojève, in his book on Hegel, that people “would perform musical concerts after the fashion of frogs and cicadas, would play like young animals, and would indulge in love like adult beasts.”
This is a short book which, as the author says, is a work of postmodern criticism rather than sociology. It was first published in 2001, so the examples and figures are somewhat dated, but the logic is still convincing.
The book first describes the development of manga and anime, and concludes that defeat in WWII forced Japanese authors to look back to the Edo (shogunate) period for an acceptable historical backdrop. Paradoxically, the available media (comics and movies) were from the USA. Hence the creation of a “pseudo-Japan manufactured from U.S.-made material”. One example is the depiction of heroines dressed as Shinto shrine maidens (which, incidentally, suggests how much cultural depth Western readers and viewers, such as myself, are likely to miss).
The author proposes a postmodern database model of the world, contrasting with what he calls the tree model of the old “grand narratives”. The idea is that the elements in the database model aren’t structured in accordance with any higher meaning or purpose but only make sense in and between themselves. This model is likened to Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome. The author illustrates his model by reference to search websites that can classify, or search for, fictional characters according to elements (“moe”) of appearance, dress, personality and so on. (I suppose the author is describing on the dominance of this way of thinking, not claiming that it is absolutely novel. Back in the 1970s, at primary school, I was interested in the characteristics of motorbikes as described in Top Trump cards, without any narrative ideas of racing or other uses for the bikes.) The “animals” in the title come from a prediction by Alexandre Kojève, in his book on Hegel, that people “would perform musical concerts after the fashion of frogs and cicadas, would play like young animals, and would indulge in love like adult beasts.”
This is a short book which, as the author says, is a work of postmodern criticism rather than sociology. It was first published in 2001, so the examples and figures are somewhat dated, but the logic is still convincing.
December 5, 2017
The database model of character traits resonates with my experiences watching anime and observing anime fans. I've noticed that anime tends to produce really out-there and interesting characters, which I often find inspiration in when creating NPC's in tabletop RPG's I am DM'ing. So this explains where that comes from. How the "moe-elements" build on each other and evolve reminds me of W. Brian Arthur's argument about technology evolution, which supposedly piggybacks off of Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."
I find thinking about the world in this way to be helpful, it helps me picture how individual things came to be the way they are. It also helps by demystifying the idea of "genius," and instead shows how acclaimed ideas are usually just one chain of evolution formed by a combination of previous ideas, which just so happen to produce something universally recognized and praised. It makes creating things much less intimidating!
I appreciated how he described postmodern ideas in accessible ways, which often isn't the case with thinkers like Baudrillard and Derrida.
Unfortunately, when trying to defend Otaku, he says homosexuality is a perversion, and lists it as such next to pedophilia. If the book was written pre-1970s I may just roll my eyes and continue reading, but this was published in 2001, and then again in 2009. Really?
I find thinking about the world in this way to be helpful, it helps me picture how individual things came to be the way they are. It also helps by demystifying the idea of "genius," and instead shows how acclaimed ideas are usually just one chain of evolution formed by a combination of previous ideas, which just so happen to produce something universally recognized and praised. It makes creating things much less intimidating!
I appreciated how he described postmodern ideas in accessible ways, which often isn't the case with thinkers like Baudrillard and Derrida.
Unfortunately, when trying to defend Otaku, he says homosexuality is a perversion, and lists it as such next to pedophilia. If the book was written pre-1970s I may just roll my eyes and continue reading, but this was published in 2001, and then again in 2009. Really?
September 6, 2019
Buku ini tipis saja, dan saya kira penulisnya telah berusaha untuk menjelaskan dengan semudah mungkin. Lagi pula, katanya ini buku populer di Jepang. Tapi, bagi saya, tetap saja ini buku berat. Diperlukan referensi ilmu filsafat, khususnya soal pascamodernisme (postmodernism). Kerap kali disebut istilah-istilah kunci seperti grand narrative, simulacra, dan semacamnya. Walaupun saya sudah mencoba mencari tahu tentang masing-masing di Wikipedia, sulit memahaminya. Sudah begitu, aslinya saya bukan otaku.
Terlepas dari sebagian besar isi buku yang saya enggak mengerti, ada sedikit yang rasa-rasanya bisa saya kaitkan dengan fenomena di seputar diri saya sendiri, khususnya yang terjadi di dunia kepenulisan amatir--tempat saya sejak lama dan entah sampai kapan berkecimpung.
Sepenangkapan saya, buku ini mempermasalahkan otaku yang mengonsumsi produk-produk visual Jepang (: anime, game, manga, novel, dan seterusnya) berdasarkan elemen-elemen tertentu yang populer hingga bisa dijadikan database. Katakanlah, telinga kucing atau rambut yang mencuat serupa antena ternyata menjadi elemen yang digemari konsumen. Elemen-elemen ini pun terus digunakan dalam produk-produk lain sehingga menjadi tren. Seolah-olah, orang mengonsumsi suatu produk bukan karena narasi atau arti di baliknya melainkan sekadar untuk melihat elemen-elemen tersebut ada. Tak ada lagi yang orisinal, sebab ini soal pasar--industri. Kita tahu industri sekadar membuat apa yang bakal laku di pasar. Kalau trennya sedang begini, maka yang begini itulah yang terus direproduksi hingga ada tren beralih. (Sebelum membaca buku ini, persoalan mengenai tren ini pernah saya temukan di artikel blog ini (tautan)).
Demikianlah yang saya temukan juga di dunia kepenulisan, khususnya di platform-platform digital kekinian, sebut saja salah satu contohnya dengan inisial WP. Kalau sudah pernah mencelupkan kaki sebentar saja di WP, seketika kita tahu bahwa cerita-cerita di sana cenderung mengandung elemen tertentu: CEO muda tampan, nikah muda, ketua OSIS bad boy, dan seterusnya, dan sebagainya, hingga bisalah dibuat database juga.
Ekstremnya, kondisi di mana orang mengonsumsi produk-produk budaya sekadar demi kepuasan sesaat tanpa mencari atau menghendaki makna mendalam di baliknya ini disebut sebagai "hewanisasi"--pelakunya disebut sebagai "database animal". Untuk jelasnya, saya kutip saja deh perkataan penerjemahnya:
Lebih lanjut, dikatakan bahwa hal ini terjadi karena manusia pascamodern tidak lagi punya struktur atau ideologi (grand narrative). (Sampai di sini, saya mentok karena pembahasannya mulai ke ranah filsafat yang tidak saya kuasai, haha.)
Manusia memang punya sifat meniru, dan ia banyak meniru hewan. Ia menciptakan pesawat terbang karena ingin seperti burung. Ia membuat orkestra karena hendak menyerupai kodok-kodok di tepi kolam. Manusia mempergunakan akalnya semata-mata demi meniru hewan! Kalau ada yang membedakan manusia dari hewan, ialah kemampuannya memberikan makna.
Hanya karena saya tidak pernah mengetikkan kata kunci 'CEO muda tampan' di WP (ataupun berburu drama Korsel dengan tokoh tersebut), bukan berarti saya terhindarkan dari fenomena ini. Ketika saya mengingat novel-novel favorit saya, ada kesamaan karakter di antara tokoh-tokoh utamanya.
Malah, saya bisa relate banget dengan keadaan sebagaimana yang penulis contohkan lewat Saber Marionette J (anime tahun 1996-1997, walaupun saya enggak pernah menontonnya).
Penulis bilang ini memang alegori brilian tentang fenomena yang umum, bukan sekadar mewakili para otaku.
Sewaktu baru keluar di Jepang, buku ini dipandang sebelah mata baik oleh kalangan kritikus maupun kalangan otaku. Sampai pada waktu itu, karya-karya yang layak "kritik" hanyalah produk-produk "budaya tinggi" seperti musik klasik, arsitektur, seni avant-garde, dan sebagainya, adapun budaya otaku masih marginal. Namun penulis ini mengangkat budaya marginal tersebut dengan meninjaunya secara kritis menurut ilmu filsafat, yang aneh, tapi toh menarik, paling enggak buat orang seperti saya.
Walaupun tak selayaknya saya membandingkan diri dengan penulis, namun cara aneh ini pun saya terapkan dalam kapasitas saya sendiri: saya terpengaruh oleh novel-novel populer sehingga terdorong untuk membuat sendiri karya semacam itu, tapi juga membaca buku-buku kritik sastra sehingga ingin menuliskannya secara semendalam mungkin. Walaupun hingga kini saya masih belum berhasil dalam menulis, pembacaan buku-buku kritik itu paling tidak memberikan saya gambaran mengenai cara menyikapi tulisan orang lain serta mengambil pelajaran dari itu--sereceh apa pun teksnya. Paling tidak, ini usaha saya untuk tidak menjadi "database animal", mungkin.
Terlepas dari sebagian besar isi buku yang saya enggak mengerti, ada sedikit yang rasa-rasanya bisa saya kaitkan dengan fenomena di seputar diri saya sendiri, khususnya yang terjadi di dunia kepenulisan amatir--tempat saya sejak lama dan entah sampai kapan berkecimpung.
Sepenangkapan saya, buku ini mempermasalahkan otaku yang mengonsumsi produk-produk visual Jepang (: anime, game, manga, novel, dan seterusnya) berdasarkan elemen-elemen tertentu yang populer hingga bisa dijadikan database. Katakanlah, telinga kucing atau rambut yang mencuat serupa antena ternyata menjadi elemen yang digemari konsumen. Elemen-elemen ini pun terus digunakan dalam produk-produk lain sehingga menjadi tren. Seolah-olah, orang mengonsumsi suatu produk bukan karena narasi atau arti di baliknya melainkan sekadar untuk melihat elemen-elemen tersebut ada. Tak ada lagi yang orisinal, sebab ini soal pasar--industri. Kita tahu industri sekadar membuat apa yang bakal laku di pasar. Kalau trennya sedang begini, maka yang begini itulah yang terus direproduksi hingga ada tren beralih. (Sebelum membaca buku ini, persoalan mengenai tren ini pernah saya temukan di artikel blog ini (tautan)).
Demikianlah yang saya temukan juga di dunia kepenulisan, khususnya di platform-platform digital kekinian, sebut saja salah satu contohnya dengan inisial WP. Kalau sudah pernah mencelupkan kaki sebentar saja di WP, seketika kita tahu bahwa cerita-cerita di sana cenderung mengandung elemen tertentu: CEO muda tampan, nikah muda, ketua OSIS bad boy, dan seterusnya, dan sebagainya, hingga bisalah dibuat database juga.
Ekstremnya, kondisi di mana orang mengonsumsi produk-produk budaya sekadar demi kepuasan sesaat tanpa mencari atau menghendaki makna mendalam di baliknya ini disebut sebagai "hewanisasi"--pelakunya disebut sebagai "database animal". Untuk jelasnya, saya kutip saja deh perkataan penerjemahnya:
The book proposes a model of the "database animal" as a new type of consumer in the postmodern information era, arguing that, rather than reading the stories in a "human" mode of consumption that longs for the existence of and searches for deeper meaning, the cravings of "animalized" otaku are satiated by classifying the characters from such stories according to their traits and anonymously creating databases that catalog, store, and display the results. In turn, the database provides a space where users can search for the traits they desire and find new characters and stories that might appeal to them. (halaman xv-xvi)
Lebih lanjut, dikatakan bahwa hal ini terjadi karena manusia pascamodern tidak lagi punya struktur atau ideologi (grand narrative). (Sampai di sini, saya mentok karena pembahasannya mulai ke ranah filsafat yang tidak saya kuasai, haha.)
Manusia memang punya sifat meniru, dan ia banyak meniru hewan. Ia menciptakan pesawat terbang karena ingin seperti burung. Ia membuat orkestra karena hendak menyerupai kodok-kodok di tepi kolam. Manusia mempergunakan akalnya semata-mata demi meniru hewan! Kalau ada yang membedakan manusia dari hewan, ialah kemampuannya memberikan makna.
Hanya karena saya tidak pernah mengetikkan kata kunci 'CEO muda tampan' di WP (ataupun berburu drama Korsel dengan tokoh tersebut), bukan berarti saya terhindarkan dari fenomena ini. Ketika saya mengingat novel-novel favorit saya, ada kesamaan karakter di antara tokoh-tokoh utamanya.
Malah, saya bisa relate banget dengan keadaan sebagaimana yang penulis contohkan lewat Saber Marionette J (anime tahun 1996-1997, walaupun saya enggak pernah menontonnya).
He is faced with the key dilemma of having to choose between, on the one hand, the Marionettes who in fact only contain artificial personalities but who have been longtime companions and, on the other hand, someone said to possess the personality of a real human but who is a total stranger--between the imitation, which looks real, or the real thing, which has never been. .... Even if this real female could be reached, at that point feelings for the imaginary characters that have been built up over a long period would have to be sacrificed in exchange for her. (halaman 21-22)
Penulis bilang ini memang alegori brilian tentang fenomena yang umum, bukan sekadar mewakili para otaku.
Sewaktu baru keluar di Jepang, buku ini dipandang sebelah mata baik oleh kalangan kritikus maupun kalangan otaku. Sampai pada waktu itu, karya-karya yang layak "kritik" hanyalah produk-produk "budaya tinggi" seperti musik klasik, arsitektur, seni avant-garde, dan sebagainya, adapun budaya otaku masih marginal. Namun penulis ini mengangkat budaya marginal tersebut dengan meninjaunya secara kritis menurut ilmu filsafat, yang aneh, tapi toh menarik, paling enggak buat orang seperti saya.
Walaupun tak selayaknya saya membandingkan diri dengan penulis, namun cara aneh ini pun saya terapkan dalam kapasitas saya sendiri: saya terpengaruh oleh novel-novel populer sehingga terdorong untuk membuat sendiri karya semacam itu, tapi juga membaca buku-buku kritik sastra sehingga ingin menuliskannya secara semendalam mungkin. Walaupun hingga kini saya masih belum berhasil dalam menulis, pembacaan buku-buku kritik itu paling tidak memberikan saya gambaran mengenai cara menyikapi tulisan orang lain serta mengambil pelajaran dari itu--sereceh apa pun teksnya. Paling tidak, ini usaha saya untuk tidak menjadi "database animal", mungkin.
November 13, 2016
highly influential text for my research. azuma's expansion of takashi murakami's concepts of the superflat, his development of the double-layer structure as a post-modern analysis of the loss of the "grand narrative" in capitalistic postwar culture, and a nuanced observation of "novel games" and moe structures result in the development of the databasing concept which is highly useful in both an anthropological understanding of the contemporary otaku, in addition to being a charged inspiration for contemporary digital art practice, and will be serving as a primary text for my newest film investigating the sliding animetic interval discussed by thomas lamarre - using hollywood behind the scenes live-action green screen footage, green chroma paint strokes for alpha channel manipulation, divorced layers from novel games, html explosion from graphic user interfaces, japanese asmr girlfriend experiences, fan-derivative works, and relevant video samples from anime films and series (digi charat, ghost in the shell).
January 2, 2025
It’s a really impressive and prescient interpretation of the way we engage with media in the modern age. I don’t agree with all of the assumptions Azuma asks us to make before he begins his analysis of otaku consumption habits, but I also understand that it’s an important base that he’s working off of to create his analysis. If not holistic and objectively correct (which nothing really ever is,) Azuma presents a deeply insightful reading of the way Otaku anime fans engage with media. Rather than media being created within the context of an outside, national or global narrative, media is now created in a self referential way, catering to the worldview and tastes of consumers as art borrows inspiration and foundation from both other art, as well as the tastes of consumers. While Azuma focuses on otaku, and is (clearly) himself an otaku, I believe his reading of media consumption can be applied to more than just anime otaku and is the current popular mode of media consumption in modern society.
February 15, 2019
A decent analysis of otaku culture as a whole, but in places misreads shows, lacks proper material evidence, and is totally off-base in taking postmodernity's "incredulity towards metanarratives" to mean literal narratives of shows. The most important idea, and the one that I don't see any problems with at all except maybe that Azuma goes a little too far in assuming it's absolute prevalence in otaku culture, is that of the database reading itself, so if you want to understand that without having to sit through a lot of hit-or-miss speculation, just go watch Pause and Select's YouTube video "Netoyome and Humanizing the Database."
June 17, 2019
A fascinating read, though I'd recommend a base familiarity with postmodernism going in, as it will make the theory a bit more accessible. Would recommend for any blooming fans of contemporary media studies- it's amazing to see just how accurate Azuma's predictions of modern culture are, given that the book was written just under two decades ago. A wonderful and compact book!
May 24, 2019
An interesting response the French diagnosis of postmodernism. Azuma looks at changes in the relation between consumer and producer of anime through readings of Kojeve's analysis of Hegel. What's more to love?
April 21, 2017
Fascinating and provocative. Has obvious wider application to Western fan communities as well, not just comic book fans but fans of tv shows (Doctor Who, Supernatural) and books (Harry Potter).
November 28, 2018
The first two chapters are superb. Sadly the third chapter where Azuma theorising 'hyperflatness' is quite unnecessary, otherwise it would have been my favourite Anime-based theory book.
May 14, 2025
Otaku: Japan’s Database Animal by Hiroki Azuma was published in 2001. The internet culture we are familiar with today was still in its nascent phase; the popularization of Japanese works in America had yet approached its peak. While this book has become dated in this regard, what still holds makes this work worth reading. For the otaku, initially seen as just a Japanese phenomenon, is shown to be a paradigm for understanding the transition to global post-modernity.
Otaku culture can be traced back to Japan’s defeat in WW2. Azuma claims that the traditional image of Japan became devoid of meaning, and that the Japanese sense of continuity ruptured. In response to this traumatic defeat and occupation, new grand narratives were constructed which could fulfill a semblance of cohesion and identity which were once given. The first-generation of Otaku settled into the fictional; their culture was defined by works such as Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Battleship Yamato, which provided a coherent and consistent world which spanned throughout each sequel.
However, the need for grand narratives eventually faded; instead, consumption conformed to what Azuma called the “Database Model”. Formerly, individual narratives were assimilated into and defined by the presence of a grand narrative; in the Database Model, the grand narrative is replaced by a database, and individual works exist as simulacrum, defined as being the intermediate forms between original and copy. From this database, works are produced and consumed as aggregations of data. New works are composed and then broken down into their attributes, which are then categorized and registered into the database. For Azuma, the derivative nature of each work meant that originality “can only exist as a simulacrum”.
Azuma claims that the director of Evangelion, Anno Hideaki, originally anticipated the creation of many derivative works. He cites the final episode of the television series as an example, where a scene of a parallel world, with a different history and the same characters with alternative personalities is depicted. Not only that, the movies which came out afterwards seemingly had little continuation with the original television series, but were instead reworkings of the original story. Azuma concluded that the Evangelion, from the outset, was “launched not as a privileged original but as a simulacrum at the same level as derivative works.”
He contrasts the audience for Evangelion with the audience for Mobile Suit Gundam. The former were consumers of grand narratives and coherent worlds. The latter, on the other hand, are consumers of the characters and settings of Evangelion - not the world in of itself. Azuma describes the elements of Evangelion as raw material, substances which can be re-imagined in different forms. They are "fragments without a unified narrative", an "aggregation of information ... in which viewers could empathize of their own accord and each could read up convenient narratives". He calls this type of narrative a "grand nonnarrative" to express that these fans do not consume a complete work or narrative, but only information.
The Otaku values a work based on its ability to arouse feelings of “moe”, that is, a strong and inexplicable affection for characters and their characteristics. Azuma, taking from Kojeve’s description of post-war America, describes Otaku consuming behavior as “animalistic”. That is to say, the Otaku are no longer motivated by any sort of “intersubjective desire”, viz, a need for the other; the objects of desire, which formally could not be realized without the other, can now be satisfied “immediately and mechanically”. The Otaku only demands that a work be composed of all the components necessary to arouse moe, nothing beyond that. The database allows consumers to search by attributes until they find a desired output. Azuma compares such consumption to drug addiction:
“Not a few otaku tell a heartfelt story that, having once encountered some character designs or the voices of some voice actors, that picture or voice circulates through that otaku’s head as if the neural wiring had completely changed. This resembles a drug dependency rather than a hobby.”
The Otaku represents a new type of human being. A person capable of living in the “endless everyday”, where life seemingly has no purpose or meaning beyond immediate experience. A person who does not have the will nor need for a total cohesive perspective on life.
In the age of generative AI and the slop media being produced seasonally, this book still rings true. AI, which is proficient in reusing already defined elements to create “artistic” (if you want to use that word) outputs, strikes fear in many artists who rely on the same elements to attract attention to their art. It also explains the volume and popularity of moe slice of life anime, where the focus is on “cute girls doing cute things”.
I enjoyed the insights of Azuma. The willingness to examine topics which on the surface have no analytical value, and then to situate this analysis within a larger context is pleasing to me. I used to be immersed in Otaku culture as a teen; therefore, I identified with many of the sentiments expressed in this work. It made me realize I have not truly gone beyond the Otaku mode of consumption, even if I no longer consume the same media I did when I was young.
Otaku culture can be traced back to Japan’s defeat in WW2. Azuma claims that the traditional image of Japan became devoid of meaning, and that the Japanese sense of continuity ruptured. In response to this traumatic defeat and occupation, new grand narratives were constructed which could fulfill a semblance of cohesion and identity which were once given. The first-generation of Otaku settled into the fictional; their culture was defined by works such as Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Battleship Yamato, which provided a coherent and consistent world which spanned throughout each sequel.
However, the need for grand narratives eventually faded; instead, consumption conformed to what Azuma called the “Database Model”. Formerly, individual narratives were assimilated into and defined by the presence of a grand narrative; in the Database Model, the grand narrative is replaced by a database, and individual works exist as simulacrum, defined as being the intermediate forms between original and copy. From this database, works are produced and consumed as aggregations of data. New works are composed and then broken down into their attributes, which are then categorized and registered into the database. For Azuma, the derivative nature of each work meant that originality “can only exist as a simulacrum”.
Azuma claims that the director of Evangelion, Anno Hideaki, originally anticipated the creation of many derivative works. He cites the final episode of the television series as an example, where a scene of a parallel world, with a different history and the same characters with alternative personalities is depicted. Not only that, the movies which came out afterwards seemingly had little continuation with the original television series, but were instead reworkings of the original story. Azuma concluded that the Evangelion, from the outset, was “launched not as a privileged original but as a simulacrum at the same level as derivative works.”
He contrasts the audience for Evangelion with the audience for Mobile Suit Gundam. The former were consumers of grand narratives and coherent worlds. The latter, on the other hand, are consumers of the characters and settings of Evangelion - not the world in of itself. Azuma describes the elements of Evangelion as raw material, substances which can be re-imagined in different forms. They are "fragments without a unified narrative", an "aggregation of information ... in which viewers could empathize of their own accord and each could read up convenient narratives". He calls this type of narrative a "grand nonnarrative" to express that these fans do not consume a complete work or narrative, but only information.
The Otaku values a work based on its ability to arouse feelings of “moe”, that is, a strong and inexplicable affection for characters and their characteristics. Azuma, taking from Kojeve’s description of post-war America, describes Otaku consuming behavior as “animalistic”. That is to say, the Otaku are no longer motivated by any sort of “intersubjective desire”, viz, a need for the other; the objects of desire, which formally could not be realized without the other, can now be satisfied “immediately and mechanically”. The Otaku only demands that a work be composed of all the components necessary to arouse moe, nothing beyond that. The database allows consumers to search by attributes until they find a desired output. Azuma compares such consumption to drug addiction:
“Not a few otaku tell a heartfelt story that, having once encountered some character designs or the voices of some voice actors, that picture or voice circulates through that otaku’s head as if the neural wiring had completely changed. This resembles a drug dependency rather than a hobby.”
The Otaku represents a new type of human being. A person capable of living in the “endless everyday”, where life seemingly has no purpose or meaning beyond immediate experience. A person who does not have the will nor need for a total cohesive perspective on life.
In the age of generative AI and the slop media being produced seasonally, this book still rings true. AI, which is proficient in reusing already defined elements to create “artistic” (if you want to use that word) outputs, strikes fear in many artists who rely on the same elements to attract attention to their art. It also explains the volume and popularity of moe slice of life anime, where the focus is on “cute girls doing cute things”.
I enjoyed the insights of Azuma. The willingness to examine topics which on the surface have no analytical value, and then to situate this analysis within a larger context is pleasing to me. I used to be immersed in Otaku culture as a teen; therefore, I identified with many of the sentiments expressed in this work. It made me realize I have not truly gone beyond the Otaku mode of consumption, even if I no longer consume the same media I did when I was young.
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